Progeny of XY females
Kevin O'Donnell
odonnell at sasa.gov.uk
Wed Jan 18 07:43:28 EST 1995
The sex tests routinely carried out on athletes occasionally throw up an
example of a woman with a normal female phenotype but with an XY
karyotype. I assume that the Y chromosome is defective due to
mutations in one or more important maleness-determining genes. If such
women are fertile (and I assume that this is the case), this means that the
progeny could have one of four possible karyotypes:
XX - female
XY - male
XY' - female (with 'defective' Y chromosome from the mother)
and YY'.
My question is this - would the YY' offspring be viable - or is the loss of
the X chromosome genes too devastating to supprot even foetal growth?
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