Boy, do I ever wish I could read the rest of this article. It sounds fascinating. Look out McGraw-Hill, those General Bio textbooks are in for a re-write.
Sorry Malcolm. It couldn’t be missed.
Groundbreaking work out of Penn State demonstrates cows are multi-Y chromosome-carrying PRIMATES!
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DownHouseSoftware 
Signe Cane
July 16, 2013 at 8:51 pm
Hilarious! Would love to see the whole thing, indeed.
downhousesoftware
July 16, 2013 at 8:57 pm
I found the original (in PNAS) and see how this guy got tripped up (well, sorta). Apparently a lot is known about primate Y chromosomes. Humans, Chimps, macaques, etc. have been sequenced, but non-primates have not been as extensively examined. This group found that the cattle Y chromosome had “1,274 genes in the male specific region of the bovine Y chromosome, compared to the 31 to 78 genes associated in the Y chromosomes of various primates.”
But for the record, this review of the article called cattle primates twice.
ratabago
July 16, 2013 at 10:45 pm
Sadly, Malcolm Flanagan’s article looks like standard journalism to me.
Slightly misleading headline? Check!
Confusion between chromosomes and genes? Check!
No idea about taxonomy/cladistics? Check!
Nice picture of udders for a review of a paper about the genetic basis of the development of testicles? Check!
It seems timely, as I woke up this morning to an article about how 41% of Australians didn’t know how long it took the Earth to go around the Sun. And that 30% didn’t know if Humans coexisted with dinosaurs.
On the other hand, the article I’d really like to be able to read in its entirety is Ti-Cheng Chang et al. in PNAS. I’m wondering if the bovine Y chromosome will turn out to be more typical of mammalian Y chromosomes once we have a representative sample sequenced, and maybe primates are just a little bit odd?
downhousesoftware
July 17, 2013 at 12:48 am
I really liked all the female cows in the picture too.
And I was willing to overlooks the genes / chromosomes misunderstanding. Even though it’s essential,there was such a surfeit of problems that I let it slide.
Glad you enjoyed it.