Scientists create male (XY) and female (XX) chromosomes in the same person

CTOnews.com, December 22 (Xinhua) from a biological point of view, both men and women have 44 autosomes and 2 sex chromosomes, of which the male sex chromosome is XY and the female sex chromosome is XX. Scientists have recently created XX and XY chromosomes in the same body. This unique set of cells can help researchers solve the long-standing problem of how sex chromosomes affect disease and their role in early development.

In addition to distinguishing the physical characteristics of women and men, XX and XY sex chromosomes also contribute to processes including immune system function, neuronal development, disease susceptibility and drug response. However, there are still many challenges in the specific effects of existing studies on X or Y chromosomes. Benjamin Lubinov (Benjamin Reubinoff), a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Hadassah Medical Center in Israel, and his team started the project to overcome obstacles to the investigation of human gender differences.

Lubinov says there are two main challenges, the difficulty of separating the effects of chromosomes and hormones, and the inability to determine the effects of X and Y chromosomes. "the main reason for doing this study is the lack of a good model to study the differences between men and women in humans," he said. although there are animal models, there are no human models.

CTOnews.com learned that to create such a model, Lubinov and his colleagues, Ithai Waldhorn, a former medical doctor and PhD student, collected white blood cells from patients with Klinefelter syndrome. Men with this condition are born with an extra X chromosome.

The cells come from the Collier Institute of Medicine's repository (Coriell Institute for Medical Research), where people donate samples for a wide range of biomedical research projects. The researchers reprogrammed three personality chromosomes (XXY) into induced pluripotent stem cells (pluripotent stem cells), which have the ability to renew themselves and develop into neurons, muscle cells or other cell types.

The scientists then realized the XY and XX chromosomes in the same person. It is genetically the same except for sex chromosomes. The researchers then conducted a series of experiments to replicate the results of previous studies on other models. For example, they confirmed previously reported differences in genes turned on in XX or XY cells.

For related scientific research, you can visit Stem Cell Reports.