PHILADELPHIA — Women and men sometimes do things differently, right down to divvying up their genetic legacies.
This divvying up is known as meiosis, a process that cuts the number of chromosomes in half during the production of eggs and sperm. Men do meiosis by the textbook, but women play it looser with the process, scientists from Washington State University and the University of Washington reported Nov. 12 in Philadelphia at the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics.
The finding could help explain why women sometimes pass along the wrong number of chromosomes to their children, the researchers suggest. “The male doesn’t contribute to chromosome abnormality in any way,” says Terry Hassold, a geneticist at Washington State University in Pullman who presented the findings.