As you know, for penile erection, a sufficient amount of testosterone-induced nitric oxide is needed in the smooth muscle of the penile arterial wall. With aging, LOH syndrome and so on, the serum testosterone level decreases, resulting in a decline of penile erectile function. Furthermore, it is known that the enzyme PDE5 in the penile artery wall also inhibits that function. Even so, it may b...

The Y chromosome is unusual in being constitutively haploid and escaping recombination for most of its length. This has led to a correspondingly unusual genomic landscape, rich in segmental duplications, which provide a rich environment for the generation of copy number variation (CNV). Interest in the chromosome comes from diverse fields, including infertility research, population genetics, fo...

Received: 24/Feb/2014, Accepted: 7/Jul/2014 Abstract Chromosome-centric human proteome project (C-HPP) is a recent initiative to rationalize and analyze gene-protein and protein-protein interactions in normal and disease conditions. This initiative is aimed to generate the proteomic atlas explaining the molecular architecture of the human body and was initiated in response to the hurdles identi...

Abstract The Y-chromosome degeneration is still an intriguing mechanism and comprises the very origin of sex. We present a coupled version of the well known logistic map and the logistic equation describing the evolution of XY chromosomes. Although chaos was found in X, Y chromosomes do not evolve chaotically. A mathematical constraint is shown as the responsible for this behaviour. In addition...

We constructed a microsatellite library from four Crocidura russula Y chromosome-specific bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) clones. Only one of eight microsatellites was male-specific, despite genome walking to obtain more flanking sequence and testing of 93 primer combinations. Potential reasons for this low success are discussed. The malespecific locus, CRY3, was genotyped in 90 males, in...

Mice provide material for studies of Y-chromosomal and autosomal sequences involved in sex determination. Eicher and coworkers have identified four subregions in the mouse Y chromosome, one of which corresponds to the Sxr fragment. This fragment demonstrates that only a small portion of the Y is necessary for male sex determination. The mouse Y chromosome also shows variants: the BALB/cWt Y chr...

"Functional wasteland," "Nonrecombining desert" and "Gene-poor chromosome" are only some examples of the different definitions given to the Y chromosome in the last decade. In comparison to the other chromosomes, the Y is poor in genes, being more than 50% of its sequence composed of repeated elements. Moreover, the Y genes are in continuous decay probably due to the lack of recombination of th...

Chimpanzees and humans are genetically very similar, with the striking exception of their Y chromosomes, which have diverged tremendously. The male-specific region (MSY), representing the greater part of the Y chromosome, is inherited from father to son in a clonal fashion, with natural selection acting on the MSY as a unit. Positive selection might involve the performance of the MSY in spermat...