Y (male) chromosome degeneration

7.10: news.biol/Y (male) chromosome degeneration:

Professor of Human Genetics
at the University of Oxford since 1997,
Bryan Sykes, discussed his DNA research ,..
Sykes described his work on the
"Seven Daughters of Eve."
The Y (male) chromosome in general has been subject to
more degeneration and mutation than the X (female) chromosome,
and, he warned, if this continues
males might eventually become extinct .
. y-chromosome holding male-ness is decomposing;
we could move male genes to another chromosome,
or we could just clone without males .

[ Primate Y chromosomes, including in humans,
have degenerated so much
that primates will also evolve relatively soon,
new sex determination systems
in about 14 million years in humans.[7][25] ]

Criticism of the book and theory at Discover Magazine/
Jean M Says: June 1st, 2011 at 11:17 am: "(

Bryan Sykes heavily invested,
both academically and commercially,
in his vision of The Seven Daughters of Eve (2001)
– the matriarchs of the European population,
only one of whom (Jasmine i.e. mtDNA J)
he pictured as arriving from the Near East with farming.
The rest he saw as more ancient in Europe.
Unfortunately for Sykes, he was just plain wrong.
Now that aDNA researchers have better techniques
to guard against contamination,
and can test to a much higher degree of
resolution on the mtDNA tree,
the picture has turned completely around.
Two papers last year showed that
Neolithic people in Northern Europe
were completely unrelated to their Mesolithic predecessors,
who were overwhelmingly U4 and U5.
New papers attempting to set their own material in context
do not always reflect the latest discoveries.
There is often a long delay between
submission and publication of a paper.
This is the second paper which has attempted to
reconcile the old Sykes story with
what is emerging from Y-DNA,
not realizing that the Seven Daughters saga
has gone the way of the dodo.
Some of the mtDNA haplogroups found in this study
are indeed ancient in Europe – the U5 for sure.
But not the majority.
.
It no longer looks as though H1 and H3 were
spread from the Franco-Cantabrian refuge
either. See my blog post:
Franco-Cantabrian refuge for what? Not mtDNA H1, H3.)

[. that post is not archived, but there is
a follow up at eupedia.com .]