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Backyard bird has a lot to teach us about sex variability
White-throated Sparrows demonstrate that traits we usually associate with sex can be influenced by genes that are not on sex chromosomes
Nevertheless, as recent research has shown, this species has much to teach us about the nature of sex variability—the way in which sex-related behaviors are influenced by genes, the complex structure of sex-associated chromosomes and the evolution of sexual reproduction itself. Twentieth-century geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky, who once said, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution,” speculated that inversions are adaptive because they capture and bind together gene variants that confer a collective benefit when inherited together. To show definitively that this receptor plays a causal role in white-striped aggression, Jennifer R. Merritt, then a graduate fellow at Emory,led an effort to experimentally manipulate the molecular products of the ESR1 gene.
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