DNA Codes: Examining How Proteins Differ Between Males & Females

[Neha98]

All of human beings receive half of their genetic material from one of the 2 parents and this genetic material has DNA codes which are transcribed into RNA and then start coding for proteins such as hormones.

But hormones for example differ from one to another; for example females secrete high amounts of estrogen and progesterone while males have high amounts of testosterone.

How can these amounts differ? although each male and female receives half of the genetic material from his/her father and the other half from his/her mother are there any other factors affecting coding for protein and what are these factors?

 

[Simon Bridge]

How can these amounts differ? although each male and female receives half of the genetic material from his/her father and the other half from his/her mother are there any other factors affecting coding for protein and what are these factors?

The difference is that the cell is in a male or female body - you do know the genetic basis for gender right?

What are you asking here?

You know that not all genes get expressed right? You have heard of dominant and recessive genes?
Like you know that if the mother has blue eyes and the father has brown eyes, the child does not have one blue eye and one brown eye ... or a pair of bluey-brown eyes or something right? It's the same with the relative ratios of hormones between sexes... a gene for making the male hormones is reinforced as a result of the presence of the Y chromosome and the genes for making the female hormones are suppressed.

So maybe you are asking how it is that some genes can be switched on and some switched off?

Basically alleles work in concert - so the presence of the sex allele on the Y chromosome affects the way the other genes are expressed, so you get a gender dimorphism in sexually reproducing organisms.

[edit] I had a look at your other threads to help me maybe understand where you are coming from - are you in or just finished 12th grade?

 

[Dale]

although each male and female receives half of the genetic material from his/her father and the other half from his/her mother are there any other factors affecting coding for protein and what are these factors?

There are a huge number of factors that modulate gene expression, and these factors can dramatically alter the amounts of any given protein that are actually produced. Consider this, your neurons and your intestinal epithelial cells have dramatically different protein production, but they have 100% identical genes.

 

[jim mcnamara]

You have a wrong starting point in your thinking. Males and females are NOT identical, at least in the sense you mean.

There are "flavors" of sex chromosomes, unhelpfully named "X" and "Y". Chromsomes are where the cell's DNA lives during cell division and creation of gametes ( egg and sperm). Chromosomes occur in pairs in you and me. In gametes there is just one of each of our 23 different chromosomes

So. Each set of potential chromosomes in a gamete (egg or sperm) for the offspring has just one sex chromsosome . Living human females have XX, (two X chromosomes), males have XY. So this means the male's sperm provides sex differentiation. Female egg does not.

There is a lot more to this subject, but please start to understand the root "cause" of male and female offspring.

 

[Laroxe]

Its worth considering that the production and use of hormones is not under the control of a single gene, it involves a whole number of different processes and depends upon a number of none genetic variables e.g. nutrition. The potential for there being individual differences is huge.