<p>wouldnt it be awesome if all of those who applied early on this board got in :)</p>
<p>But that wont happen…(doesnt hurt to dream)</p>
<p>That seriously would be awesome. Then we could all meet up at MIT and hang out/study together (or are they the same thing there?! Ha). We’d have a good group of friends just coming into school, as you guys all seem pretty amiable.</p>
<p>I’m not mad; it happens all the time on CC. I just wanted to put it out there so everybody would know from now on.</p>
<p>And also for the record, I hated biology so I’m not up on all the exceptions, mutations, etc (somebody mentioned Kleinfelters.) I’m definitely more of a physics person (against the girl stereotype, I suppose.)</p>
<p>It’s okay. I love all the natural sciences, but I have to say I’m right there with you as a physics person. I was speaking tongue-in-cheek anyway.</p>
<p>Besides, if you understand all of physics, you can derive the other sciences. :D</p>
<p>My friend Erica is a prospective physics major and she keeps telling me about how hard it is is being a girl in physics. “It’s not about breaking a stereotype… sometimes you just want to smash particles together.” However, being that the school in question is MIT, I have a feeling you won’t feel so out of place. ;-)</p>
<p>You also won’t necessarily see girls doing MechE like my friend at UVA.</p>
<p>Yes Olo, but the applicant ratio is not close to 1:1 :)…the acceptance rate for females is about 26% and 11% for males, I think.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Or, if we use the correlation of three or more X chromosomes to serial killers (my bio teacher told me this once, I’m not sure how true it is)…</p>
<p>“Hi! I’m XXXXY.”</p>
<p>“…o_O”</p>
<p>Note: I am not really XXXXY :)</p>
<p>Any guess as to how many people are applying early this year?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes, here are the exact numbers according to US News & World Report
Male applicants: 7,669
Male acceptances: 898 (11.7%)</p>
<p>Female applicants: 2,797
Female acceptances: 767 (27.4%)</p>
<p>Zoogies: Multiple x chromosomes beyond two generally lead to retardation, such is the case with the majority of XXX females, who score on average two standard deviations below XX females on IQ testing.</p>
<p>Multiple Y chromosomes, however, tend to make men more aggressive.
</p>
<p>So I think the connection your teacher was referring to was with Y chromosomes, not with X. :)</p>
<p>and having only one X chromosome doesnt necessarily denote a male either, lol</p>
<p>True, maleness is defined by the presence of a Y chromosome. Technically, a Kleinfelter’s can look completely female and have only the female sexual organs, but is still considered a male.</p>
<p>Having just one X chromosome is Turner Syndrome, and is extremely rare. About 99% of such fertilizations (45X) result in sponteneous abortion.</p>
<p>Warning! Pedantic biology major dropping in to make a single pedantic point!</p>
<p>Maleness is determined by the presence of the SRY gene rather than the entire Y chromosome. People who inherit a Y chromosome lacking a functional SRY gene are phenotypically female, despite their XY genotype. :)</p>
<p>MIT connection: [Professor</a> Page](<a href=“Faculty - MIT Department of Biology”>Faculty - MIT Department of Biology), of the [Biology</a> Department](<a href=“http://web.mit.edu/biology/www]Biology”>http://web.mit.edu/biology/www) and the [url=<a href=“http://wi.mit.edu/]Whitehead”>http://wi.mit.edu/]Whitehead</a> Institute<a href=“and%20my%20%5Burl=http://web.mit.edu/7.03/]genetics[/url]%20professor”>/url</a> is one of the world’s leading experts on sex chromosomes, their genetic makeup, and their evolution.</p>
<p>I sent mine as well.</p>
<p>Nice! </p>
<p>So, assuming the SRY gene is on the Y chromasome, what are the chances of a nondisjunction error AND a deletion of the SRY gene?</p>
<p>Here’s what I know: there are a few people who are born XX, but with the SRY gene on one of the X chromosomes (where it crossed over during recombination – the X and Y have similar sequences at their far ends, and do engage in a limited amount of recombination). So it’s not usually nondisjunction, but misrecombination, that leads to XX males. </p>
<p>Re: nonfunctional copies of SRY, I would suggest the book [Genome](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060932902/102-4960849-6586528?v=glance&n=283155&s=books&v=glance]Genome[/url]:”>http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060932902/102-4960849-6586528?v=glance&n=283155&s=books&v=glance):</a>
</p>
<p>I will try to find exact numbers at some point…</p>
<p>Interesting…</p>
<p>So, what specifically does the SRY gene translate? Since it’s only a single codon, can’t it only translate to a single amino acid? If so, does it dictate hormonal changes or physical attributes? To clarify my question, how does an XX male (with the SRY gene) differ from an XY female (without SRY gene) and from an XY male (with the SRY gene)?</p>
<p>Hopefully my clarification didn’t further confuse you!</p>
<p>No, SRY is the name of the gene, not the sequence that it creates. It’s a transcription factor – a protein that binds to DNA and causes certain other genes to be transcribed – and it causes the transcription of various guy-related genes.</p>
<p>A link I should have posted earlier: [Everything</a> you could ever want to know about SRY](<a href=“http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/dispomim.cgi?id=480000]Everything”>http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/dispomim.cgi?id=480000), from the National Institutes of Health’s Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man site.</p>
<p>I should have known its a transcription factor! It all makes sense now :-). </p>
<p>Thanks for the clarification. If didn’t make sense for a single codon gene to cause such vast differences.</p>
<p>We need to bump this thread.</p>