Saturday, December 8, 2012

Bilateral what?

Bilateral assymetrical gyndromorphism.  The phenomenon where one half of an organism's body is male, the other half is female.

A gynandromorph Papilio glaucus
 
 
The condition typically occurs early in an organism's development, when a cell fails to divide it's sex chromosome properly, resulting in, for example, one XXY-Y cell and one Y cell, as opposed to an XX and a YY.  These ... confused... cells will continue to reproduce, and as the affected creature grows, will end up with equal half-male and half-female tissues.
 
More information can be found here

No comments:

Post a Comment