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I HAD PLANNED on covering the article on the platypus genome that came out in Nature last week, but since then this paper has been discussed in detail on Pharyngula and Adaptive Complexity and I think further discussion would be moot. I did notice while reading the paper that the unfortunate description of certain platypus genes as “reptilian” cropped up frequently. Although the authors noted that the sauropsids and synapsids are amniotes, they never mentioned that platypus genes shared with reptiles are actually basal amniote genes. Although their phylogenetic tree shows synapsids and sauropsids clearly diverging from a common amniote ancestor, they do not seem to realize referring to these ancestral amniote genes as “reptilian” suggests evolution of the platypus (and thus all synapsids) from reptiles instead of from a non-reptilian amniote.
However, today I want to talk about the platypus’ sex chromosomes. Platypuses, like the therians, have genetic sex determination. They have an XX/XY system in which males (XY) are the heterogametic sex. Many reptiles have environmental sex determination, with sex determined by factors such as incubation temperature during embryonic development. However, some reptiles and all birds have a ZW/ZZ sex determination system, with females (ZW) as the heterogametic sex.
AMONG EUKARYOTES, sexual reproduction is more common than asexual reproduction, and often organisms that reproduce asexually also have a supplementary means of sexual reproduction. While sexual reproduction does have some drawbacks, it appears that in general the benefits outweigh these.
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