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The title used to say Male and Female (not XX/XY), and that's the title of the actual article. Normal HN policy is to keep the article title unless it's long or

The title used to say Male and Female (not XX/XY), and that's the title of the actual article. Normal HN policy is to keep the article title unless it's long or clickbait. Why was it edited?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
cjtrowbridge 4y ago
The article title is a factually incorrect representation of the study being discussed. If you read the article and the study, you'll see the study was about changing chromosomes in a cell line, not about changing the sex of a person. Everything about primary and secondary sex characteristics would not be affected by changing someone's chromosomes. Homologous sex structures diverge before birth based primarily on dht metabolism. Even then, chromosome expression doesn't always determine how dht will metabolize, meaning whatever chromosomes a person has can still lead to someone having any kind of primary and secondary sex characteristics. The six most common sex chromosome patterns in humans are XX, XY, XXY, XYY, X, and XXXY (in that order). Sex and gender are both far more complex than merely chromosome expression, and chromosome expression is anything but a binary. This study has nothing to do with being male or female.
- Aarostotle 4y ago
  From the article: > “This is a very well-designed study that validates the notion that sex differences start early in development—and that they depend on the sex chromosomes because that’s the only thing that can account for those differences,” says Nora Engel, a professor of cancer and cell biology at Temple University, who was not involved in this work. Is this your area of expertise?
  - cjtrowbridge 4y ago
    It is. And that quote is correct. There's two problems here. One is that XX/XY is not even a majority of the common human chromosome karyotypes, and changing karyotypes does not change someone's sex characteristics; those are determined at one specific moment during gestation, which may or may not be affected by changing the chromosomes beforehand, but certainly would not be affected by changing their chromosomes after that moment. Primary and secondary sex characteristics are determined by androgen metabolism, not by chromosome karyotypes. Secondly most of the human karyotypes are not assigned a sex until some time after birth, and XY is often assigned female at birth because the divergence of homologous structures depends on androgen metabolism, not chromosome karyotype. Sex and gender don't exist for cell lines in the same way they do for people. TL/DR; This is an article about a study that found they could change a cell line's karyotype, not a person's sex characteristics which are determined not by chromosome karyotypes but by androgen metabolism during gestation. Whoever wrote the headline didn't understand the topic.
gizmo686 4y ago
I can't speak for whoever changed the title, but XX/XY is far more accurate and less clickbaity than Male/Female in this context. There is far more to human biological sex than the chromosomal distinction. Take an XY cell, but it in an otherwise female body, and it will, in many ways, express itself similar to that of an XX cell. This is the theory behind hormome replacement therapy (HRT). That is not to say that an XY cell in a female body would be identical to an XX cell in the same. For instance, an XY eye in a female body would likely be similar to a male eye with regards to color blindness; because we have traced colorblindness directly to a chromosonal difference. However, most sex differences (in humans) are not chromosonal. Instead they are triggered by a single gene (SRY), that just so happens to occur on the Y chromosone. That single gene codes for a protein that triggers almost all of the sex differentiation. Splice that single gene onto a X chromosome and you can get an XX human that appears male. Exactly what differences are directly chromosomal, and what are developmental is a largly open area of research, and exactly what this achievement hopes to further enable.
- kelseyfrog 4y ago
  Just curious, what are the potential effects of CRISPR/Cas9-mediated knock-out of SRY in adult humans?
- anon291 4y ago
  SRY triggers development of testis, but in fact, if you have a translocation of just SRY onto X, and thus are an XX male, you may have issues with reproduction, as the Y chromosome contains other supporting genes for the production of sperm. We can go on about male v female as a social construct, but biologically, males produce the smaller gamete, so if one has SRY and has an otherwise male phenotype, but isn't producing sperm, from a strictly biological perspective, it's not at all clear that the statement 'SRY is the determinant of maleness' is necessarily true. It certainly will make you develop testicles and male secondary sex characteristics. You are correct on the cell naming. Cells cannot be male or female. That is a characteristic of a complete person. They can be derived from a male or female, but what the scientists did here did not change that attribute of a cell.
dang 4y ago
Because it was clickbait and arguably misleading as well. Note that we replaced it with what the article itself says it's about, once it gets to the stage of actually saying that.

The title used to say Male and Female (not XX/XY), and that's the title of the actual article. Normal HN policy is to keep the article title unless it's long or clickbait. Why was it edited?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

cjtrowbridge 4y ago

The article title is a factually incorrect representation of the study being discussed. If you read the article and the study, you'll see the study was about changing chromosomes in a cell line, not about changing the sex of a person. Everything about primary and secondary sex characteristics would not be affected by changing someone's chromosomes. Homologous sex structures diverge before birth based primarily on dht metabolism. Even then, chromosome expression doesn't always determine how dht will metabolize, meaning whatever chromosomes a person has can still lead to someone having any kind of primary and secondary sex characteristics. The six most common sex chromosome patterns in humans are XX, XY, XXY, XYY, X, and XXXY (in that order). Sex and gender are both far more complex than merely chromosome expression, and chromosome expression is anything but a binary. This study has nothing to do with being male or female.

Aarostotle 4y ago
From the article: > “This is a very well-designed study that validates the notion that sex differences start early in development—and that they depend on the sex chromosomes because that’s the only thing that can account for those differences,” says Nora Engel, a professor of cancer and cell biology at Temple University, who was not involved in this work. Is this your area of expertise?
- cjtrowbridge 4y ago
  It is. And that quote is correct. There's two problems here. One is that XX/XY is not even a majority of the common human chromosome karyotypes, and changing karyotypes does not change someone's sex characteristics; those are determined at one specific moment during gestation, which may or may not be affected by changing the chromosomes beforehand, but certainly would not be affected by changing their chromosomes after that moment. Primary and secondary sex characteristics are determined by androgen metabolism, not by chromosome karyotypes. Secondly most of the human karyotypes are not assigned a sex until some time after birth, and XY is often assigned female at birth because the divergence of homologous structures depends on androgen metabolism, not chromosome karyotype. Sex and gender don't exist for cell lines in the same way they do for people. TL/DR; This is an article about a study that found they could change a cell line's karyotype, not a person's sex characteristics which are determined not by chromosome karyotypes but by androgen metabolism during gestation. Whoever wrote the headline didn't understand the topic.

gizmo686 4y ago

I can't speak for whoever changed the title, but XX/XY is far more accurate and less clickbaity than Male/Female in this context. There is far more to human biological sex than the chromosomal distinction. Take an XY cell, but it in an otherwise female body, and it will, in many ways, express itself similar to that of an XX cell. This is the theory behind hormome replacement therapy (HRT). That is not to say that an XY cell in a female body would be identical to an XX cell in the same. For instance, an XY eye in a female body would likely be similar to a male eye with regards to color blindness; because we have traced colorblindness directly to a chromosonal difference. However, most sex differences (in humans) are not chromosonal. Instead they are triggered by a single gene (SRY), that just so happens to occur on the Y chromosone. That single gene codes for a protein that triggers almost all of the sex differentiation. Splice that single gene onto a X chromosome and you can get an XX human that appears male. Exactly what differences are directly chromosomal, and what are developmental is a largly open area of research, and exactly what this achievement hopes to further enable.

kelseyfrog 4y ago
Just curious, what are the potential effects of CRISPR/Cas9-mediated knock-out of SRY in adult humans?
anon291 4y ago
SRY triggers development of testis, but in fact, if you have a translocation of just SRY onto X, and thus are an XX male, you may have issues with reproduction, as the Y chromosome contains other supporting genes for the production of sperm. We can go on about male v female as a social construct, but biologically, males produce the smaller gamete, so if one has SRY and has an otherwise male phenotype, but isn't producing sperm, from a strictly biological perspective, it's not at all clear that the statement 'SRY is the determinant of maleness' is necessarily true. It certainly will make you develop testicles and male secondary sex characteristics. You are correct on the cell naming. Cells cannot be male or female. That is a characteristic of a complete person. They can be derived from a male or female, but what the scientists did here did not change that attribute of a cell.

dang 4y ago

Because it was clickbait and arguably misleading as well. Note that we replaced it with what the article itself says it's about, once it gets to the stage of actually saying that.