{"id":58358,"date":"2026-08-09T16:15:27","date_gmt":"2026-08-09T16:15:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/stick-insects-retain-gene-balancing-after-a-million-years-without-sex\/"},"modified":"2026-08-09T16:15:27","modified_gmt":"2026-08-09T16:15:27","slug":"stick-insects-retain-gene-balancing-after-a-million-years-without-sex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/stick-insects-retain-gene-balancing-after-a-million-years-without-sex\/","title":{"rendered":"Stick insects retain gene-balancing after a million years without sex"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Dr Darren Parker, a lecturer in evolutionary biology, explained that parthenogenesis<\/a>, reproduction without the need for male fertilisation, had occurred naturally in some animal species.<\/p>\n

As males and females have a different number of X chromosomes – males have one (XY), and females have two (XX) – “gene expression needs to be balanced equally” between the sexes.<\/p>\n

Species had evolved mechanisms known as dosage compensation “to do just this”, he said.<\/p>\n

But what happens if these mechanisms for equally sharing male and female genes are no longer needed?<\/p>\n

“That’s the question we set out to answer,” said Parker.<\/p>\n

“This is the precise situation found in asexually reproducing stick insects.<\/p>\n

“Because the females reproduce without fertilisation from males, there is no need to equalise gene expression.<\/p>\n

“By investigating gene expression in rare males, our study found that rather than decaying away as we expected, dosage compensation mechanisms remained fully functional despite not being needed for over a million years.”<\/p>\n

His report has been published in scientific journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Dr Darren Parker, a lecturer in evolutionary biology, explained that parthenogenesis, reproduction without the need for male fertilisation, had occurred naturally in some animal species. As males and females have a different number of X chromosomes – males have one (XY), and females have two (XX) – “gene expression needs to be balanced equally” between […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58359,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[16283,3400,188,7557,1998,9094,380],"class_list":["post-58358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wales","tag-genebalancing","tag-insects","tag-million","tag-retain","tag-sex","tag-stick","tag-years"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58358"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58360,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58358\/revisions\/58360"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}