囧研究：基因专家称500万年后男人将灭绝

Men are living on borrowed time, according to a leading female scientist. Professor Jenny Graves even claims the male of the species is heading for extinction. And chaps, the bad news doesn’t end there, because the process may have already started.

男人正在走向灭绝，世界知名女性科学家珍妮-格雷弗斯表示，男性正在走向灭绝，更糟糕的是，这个灭绝的过程现在已经开始了。

Professor Graves, one of Australia’s most influential scientists, believes that women will win the battle of the sexes. She says that the inherent fragility of the male sex chromosome, the Y sex chromosome, means that men are sliding towards extinction.

作为澳大利亚最有影响力的科学家之一，格雷弗斯教授表示，女性将会在两性战争中获得胜利。她认为男性基因中的Y染色体的脆弱性将会使男性走向灭绝。

Professor Graves’s prediction hinges around the number of genes on the male and female sex chromosomes. The female, or X, chromosome, contains a healthy 1,000 or so genes. What's more, girls and women have two of them. The Y chromosome started off with as many genes as its female counterpart. But over hundreds of millions of years it has crumbled away, leaving fewer than 100 genes in modern man. This includes the SRY gene, the ‘male master switch’ that determines whether an embryo is male or female.

格雷弗斯教授是根据男性染色体和女性染色体中基因数量而做出的预测。女性染色体，也就是X染色体中有大约1000个健康的基因。而且女性有两个这样的染色体。而男性染色体，即Y染色体在最初时也有大约相同数量的健康基因，但是随着几百万年的演变，现代男性身上Y染色体中基因的数量只有100个多一点了。男性染色体中还有一种被称作SRY的基因，这是决定胚胎性别的基因。

Giving a public lecture, the professor said: ‘It is very bad news for all the men here.’ In her talk at the Australian Academy of Science, the professor described the remaining genes on the Y chromosome as being mostly ‘junk’.

在一次公开讲座中，格雷弗斯教授说道，“这对于在座的男性来说是个坏消息。”她在澳大利亚科学院的讲话中曾把男性的Y染色体形容为大多数都是“垃圾”。

However, there is some good news. Professor Graves estimates that it will take five million years for the Y chromosome, and the men it produces, to disappear all together. She says that when Y chromosome falls to pieces, another chromosome could take on the role of the missing Y, leading to the creation of a new species of human.

但是也是有一些好消息的。格雷弗斯教授预测要等到500万年后，Y染色体才会完全消失，而且到时候会有其他的染色体来替代消失的Y染色体的功用，就会产生新型的人类。

There is already a precedent for this in nature, in the form of a Japanese spiny rat which has survived the loss of its Y chromosome.

在自然界，这种新型染色体已有先例。在一种日本田鼠身上，即使没有了Y染色体，它们仍然能够繁衍生存。