研究：男性生男生女的傾向遺傳自父母

A Newcastle University study involving thousands of families is helpingprospectiveparents work out whether they are likely to have sons or daughters.

英國紐卡斯?fàn)柎髮W(xué)一項(xiàng)有千萬家庭參與的研究能夠幫助準(zhǔn)父母預(yù)測孩子性別。

The work by Corry Gellatly, a research scientist at the university, has shown that men inherit a tendency to have more sons or more daughters from their parents. This means that a man with many brothers is more likely to have sons, while a man with many sisters is more likely to have daughters.

科里·格拉特利是英國紐卡斯?fàn)柎髮W(xué)的一位研究員，他的研究表明，男性生男生女的傾向遺傳自父母。這就意味著，兄弟多的男性更可能生兒子，而姐妹多的男性則更可能生女兒。

The research involved a study of 927 family trees containing information on 556,387 people from North America and Europe going back to 1600.

這項(xiàng)研究調(diào)查了927個(gè)家庭的族譜，包含北美和歐洲自1600年以來共556,387人的信息。

"The family tree study showed that whether you're likely to have a boy or a girl is inherited. We now know that men are more likely to have sons if they have more brothers but are more likely to have daughters if they have more sisters. However, in women, you just can't predict it," Mr Gellatly explains.

“這項(xiàng)族譜研究表明，生男生女的傾向是遺傳而來的。我們現(xiàn)在明白了，男性如果兄弟多則容易生兒子，姐妹多則容易生女兒。然而，在女性身上卻無法預(yù)測這一點(diǎn)。”格拉特利先生解釋道。

Men determine the sex of a baby depending on whether their spermis carrying an X or Y chromosomecontrols whether a man's sperm contains more X or more Y chromosomes⁶, which affects the sex of his children. On a larger scale, the number of men with more X sperm compared to the number of men with more Y sperm affects the sex ratio of children born each year.

紐卡斯?fàn)柎髮W(xué)的這項(xiàng)研究表明，一個(gè)至今尚未發(fā)現(xiàn)的基因決定了男性的精子里含有更多的X還是Y染色體，而精子所含的染色體會(huì)影響孩子的性別。從更大范圍來看，產(chǎn)生更多含X染色體精子的男性與產(chǎn)生更多含Y染色體精子的男性數(shù)量之比，影響著每年新生兒的性別比例。