This book talked clearly about the fever of Y chromosome and how it won against the X chromosome. The ancient battle between both chromosomes and how they even fight each other in the womb of the mother.
How the fight can goes on after having a birth and how different cultures had to deal with the new babies.

The age of Vikings and their insistent  urge of men to mate with as many women as they can and posibble. As their first born sons accumulated wealth enough to collect more women and the unfortunate brother should seek the mating apportunity far at another lands.

Sexual selection acts through wealth and power. It has several distributions about the balance between the two sexes
Y chromosome is definitely involved in deciding the sex of the fetus, not Mitochondrial DNA. Even though both sexes need Mitochondrial DNA and the NUCLEAR chromosome did its best to capture Mitochondrial gene over the course of evolution.

How SRY gene is the solution for the Y chromosome and how the Mole Vole came up and developed a self defense mechanism to protect its Y chromosome from going extinct

How the sperms are getting less by time and how we are going to face an age with no sperms enough. With a percent of 1% each 5.000 years. It means no more than 125.000 years. Unless Y chromosome came up with a solution to save itself.  Plus the other obstacles that Y chromosome is facing, which is the mutations that hit the sperms more than the eggs in women. Because of the non stop producing of the sperms unlike the eggs. Each time a mutation happen in the DNA of the sperms. It weaken it till the time it will become extinct and vanish away

Ufuk açıcı...

A discussion of the male Y-chromosome, its history, genetics and possible future.

Türkçeye 2017 yılında çevrilen kitabın orijinal ilk baskı tarihi 2003. Kitap, daha sonra okunmak üzere kütüphanemde duruyordu. Biraz gündemden uzaklaşmak için elime aldım, okumaya başladım ve daha ilk satırlarından itibaren kendimi müthiş bir "bilimsel dedektiflik" öyküsünün peşinden sürüklenir buldum.

Büyük boy, 238 sayfalık kitap, onu elimden bıraktığım her an beni çağırdı. Büyük bir keyifle okudum, bitirdim.

Genetik Profesörü Bryan Sykes, yakın zamanda, 2020 Aralık'ta vefat etti. Adem'in Laneti, çok ilginç çalışma ve iddialarla dolu iki kitabından biri. 2002 yılında yazdığı Havva'nın Yedi Kızı, mitokondriyal DNA'nın, Adem'in Laneti ise Y kromozomunun izini sürüyor.

Kitabın alt başlığı ve tanıtım yazısı, kitap hakkında yeterince bilgi veriyor. Bu konulara ilgi duyan okurun muhakkak okuması gereken kitap, asgari düzeyde biyoloji bilgisi gerektiriyor. Bunun ötesinde bir bilimsel donanıma sahip olmanız gerekmiyor.

Kitabı okumayı planlayan okura, kitapta anlatılan fikirleri daha iyi kavrayabilmek üzere, ilave araştırma yapmasını tavsiye ederim. İnternet bu tip bir araştırma için birbirinden ilginç web sayfası ve video ile dolu.

Bu kitabı okuduktan sonra Havva'nın Yedi Kızı'nı daha çok merak ediyorum. Okunma sırası onda..

Interesting read overall, initially sluggish, I eventually was captivated by the chapter where he discusses the strong female dominated family vs the male dominated family. Otherwise, the book provided some interesting points - great for some discussion & banter with my husband.

Some of the technicalities took a wee bit long for my liking. I wish he would have expanded more on how he thought the Y chromosome was actually going to go extinct, or how women were going to evolve to reproduce asexually. He explains his theory for both sides of the survival/extinction of the Y chromosome, and yet came out kind of neutral?

Wondering about his other book, Seven Daughters of Eve now.

مضمون الكتاب مخيف وخاصة الأبحاث والدراسات العلمية والتي تثبت تفوق الأنثى على الذكر مما يفسر التصرف العنيف وردة الفعل الغريبة أثناء تميز الأنثى وما يسببه من غيرة وتصرفات عشوائية من الذكر ضد الأنثى .
أعتقد من وجهة نظري أن فيه من الحقائق ما يكفي لإعادة التفكير بجدية بإستقلالية الأنثى التام.

Sykes interweaves discoveries of his own DNA in with larger points about fertilization, asexual and sexual reproduction and the general health of humans.
I think I knew already about the large numbers of animals that "decide" on the sex of their offspring by the temperatures of the eggs before they hatch. There is a definite climate change connection here and the end result can be predicted but is unknown. Sykes goes through how humans have long tried to decide themselves the gender of their babies through fads and stories as well as taking deadly action after birth. He notes there are currently 40 million more men in India than women following decades, maybe centuries of aborting female embroyos. (It is my speculation that Indian men are hence a little "grabby" as a stereotype and they have a masculine dominated culture as well as possibly tens of millions of men who know they will never find a mate)

There is a battle of the sexes going on between the Y chromosome and the mitochondria. Y chromosomes have been largely stripped of much of their genetic power-contain only mitochondria to power the sperm and are predominantly waste with very few viable working pieces. That being said the Y chromosome has found a way to spread over the globe in ways unlike mitochondrial DNA. For instance in Polynesia nearly one third of the seemingly native men did NOT arrive with other polynesian settlers but are direct male descendants of Europeans. Same is said for large groups of previously believed to be native americans in latin america and of course those of african descent in the US. Mitochondrial DNA is not so worried about this, as those populations are almost always nearly 100% "authentic" to the region-Incan, polynesian and african.
The other example is of Iceland whose women are only half viking and have celtic or british while the men are almost completely nordic. Many of the vikings having settled in britain before sailing away with their local bride to iceland for cheap land.

Excellent scientific research which nosedives into dystopic science fiction in the final chapter. Just rip that out when you first purchase the book and enjoy the rest of what may be the most fascinating genetic research of our time.

First thing first, I don't have a scientific background. I majored in human sciences (History and English Lit & Civilisation), and the only classes I've ever had about genetics were in my sophomore year in high school. Yet the subject holds quite some interest for me, and I was glad that I managed to understand pretty much what was written in this book. It wasn't that much of a given.

I appreciated the picture Brian Sykes draws of species' reproduction—what happens with the 'cloning species' vs. the 'sexual species'. This book gave me quite a few things to mull about and look into. A lot of what was presented in it is closer to speculation, and thus can't be taken at face value, just like that, but I found the reasoning behind it compelling and quite justified. I also enjoyed reading about the scientific procedures involved, even though they probably occupy a little too much space in the text.

On the other hand, this book could do with a different structure. At times, I had the feeling that the author was jumping to something different, only to go back later to his first point, and so on. It tends to disrupt the flow in the demonstration, so to speak. Other elements could and should have been put aside (I didn't care much for the passages in which he waxed lyrical—I wanted the scientific facts, after all). And in my opinion, too little space was devoted to properly dealing with the actual question of "will men go extinct, or not?" (it was quite the pitch on the cover, and in the end, it felt as if it hadn't been addressed as much as other points).

All in all, I enjoyed reading it, but I'm not sure someone with a more solid scientific background than mine would get that much out of it.

I have to say that this book surprised me at some points. I'm glad I read it because I've learned so many new things (some of which i won't really need in life, but it's always fun to learn :D).

I'd recommend the book...though it's a bit hard to start reading it, it gets better towards the end ;)

First published in 2003, Adam’s Curse is very much a companion piece to Sykes’ earlier book The Seven Daughters of Eve (2001). Where the first publication focuses on mitochondrial DNA, a circular chromosome passed from mothers to daughters, this one centers around the Y chromosome, that biogenetic sex determinant passed from fathers to sons.

Selfish Genetics

“Our genes are not serving us at all. It is the other way around. We are serving them. Faceless, thoughtless and ruthless. This was even worse than straight Darwin for those people still looking for the hand of God in shaping the natural world. How could all this wonder have such a blind and mechanical foundation as the simple chemistry of DNA?”

If this sounds familiar it’s because Bryan Sykes is firmly in the camp of Richard Dawkins.

“This unsettling conclusion, deeply troubling to those who feel their fundamental beliefs have been shattered, has overshadowed all of biology for the past thirty years. There are those who disagree, certainly, but while the supremacy of the gene as the moving force in evolution has faced vigorous challenges from all quarters, it has not been overthrown.”

The So-Called “Gay Gene”

After much contemplation and self reflection I’ve decided I don’t want to risk an excursion through the minefield of public opinion by examining what Dr. Sykes wrote over twenty years ago. I’ll just say that the question of nature versus nurture when it comes to sexual orientation has, for the most part, been resolved. But in light of the fact that certain religious types still operate ‘conversion therapy’ programs—I’m looking at you James Dobson—it is worth reiterating that a human being can no more choose which sex they are attracted to than they can choose their height or their lactose tolerance. Most (not all) men with a specific segment of the X chromosome (Xq28) are predisposed to be gay. So what? Some people are gay, some people are left handed, others have red hair. None of these are “unnatural,” and certainly none of these are “abominations.”

Whoops. Here I am standing in the minefield. Allow me to egress.

The Curse of Adam

Because of decay and mutation in the Y chromosome, about one percent of each generation of males is 10% less fertile than the generation before. The average sperm count of males is falling at a noticeably significant rate. In fact, medical journals have already decreased the lower limit of an average sperm count from 60,000,000 to 20,000,000 per milliliter. If you do the math you’ll see that, if trends continue, men will eventually become extinct. Before we decide if this is necessarily a bad thing you should know that the rate of decline is excruciatingly slow. Fortunately, or unfortunately, something like climate change or a space meteor will have wiped us all out long before the last set of human testicles turns to dust.

Acid Flashbacks?

In both this book and The Seven Daughters of Eve Professor Sykes briefly departs from hard science into what I would describe as a ‘flight of fiction.’ In Seven Daughters it was his inventive biographies of all seven mitochondrial ancestors. Here in Adam’s Curse he quite inexplicably tangents into a history of human evolution from the perspective of Gaia the Earth Goddess. I don’t really have any explanation for these offshoots of imagination other than, possibly, the after effects of the 1960s.

Minus the star sacrificed on the alter of Gaia, this is a four star read.

I found this book (by the renowned Oxford geneticist Bryan Sykes) very scary. He analyzes the Y-chromosome (the "male" chromosome) among living species, and he explains
that it is far, far less stout than other chromosomes (possessing about one tenth the number of genes as the others). Sykes gives a lucid but pessimistic prognosis of the Y-chromosome due to its great fragility. This book is particularly meaningful in view of a recent article in Scientific American (December 2023) about asexual reproduction among certain crustaceans, insects, other invertebrates, and particularly a certain wingless, stick-like insect (found in California) which has no need for males at all in order to reproduce. Of course, anyone who has studied biology knows the benefit of sexual reproduction which generates mutations, some of which are beneficial to survival and facilitate evolution. But while asexual reproduction (that is, by females cloning themselves) is less conducive to mutations and evolution, the greater number of such less-complicated and more consistent offspring also helps the survival of a species. What is particularly notable in Sykes' book is his explanation of the eventual possibility that higher species, such as female mammals, will eventually be able to reproduce themselves without males once the ever-weakening Y-chromosome in males becomes totally disabled and ineffective. Sykes notes that the process of asexual reproduction has already occurred among a certain species of rodent in Australia and will probably eventually appear in other mammals and humans. I would reiterate that this book is by a serious Oxford geneticist, and does not refer to popular pseudo-scientific theories, such as the one that women, with their distinctive plumbing, lack of certain appendages, scrawny arms, wide hips and weird lumps on their chests, are obviously not truly human, and must be extra-terrestrial aliens who are just biding their time before taking over, that they created males just to allow mutations and generate diversity within their species, and that women will dispense with men as soon as women feel truly secure. Since Sykes is a respected geneticist, it behooves men to take this book seriously and be afraid. Be very afraid.