囧研究：基因專家稱500萬年後男人將滅絕
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.
男人正在走向滅絕，世界知名女性科學家珍妮-格雷弗斯表示，男性正在走向滅絕，更糟糕的是，這個滅絕的過程現在已經開始了。
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.
作爲澳大利亞最有影響力的科學家之一，格雷弗斯教授表示，女性將會在兩性戰爭中獲得勝利。她認爲男性基因中的Y染色體的脆弱性將會使男性走向滅絕。
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.
格雷弗斯教授是根據男性染色體和女性染色體中基因數量而做出的預測。女性染色體，也就是X染色體中有大約1000個健康的基因。而且女性有兩個這樣的染色體。而男性染色體，即Y染色體在最初時也有大約相同數量的健康基因，但是隨着幾百萬年的演變，現代男性身上Y染色體中基因的數量只有100個多一點了。男性染色體中還有一種被稱作SRY的基因，這是決定胚胎性別的基因。
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’.
在一次公開講座中，格雷弗斯教授說道，“這對於在座的男性來說是個壞消息。”她在澳大利亞科學院的講話中曾把男性的Y染色體形容爲大多數都是“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。格雷弗斯教授預測要等到500萬年後，Y染色體纔會完全消失，而且到時候會有其他的染色體來替代消失的Y染色體的功用，就會產生新型的人類。
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，這種新型染色體已有先例。在一種日本田鼠身上，即使沒有了Y染色體，它們仍然能夠繁衍生存。
