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The belief that all snakes possess ZW sex chromosomes has prevailed for decades, despite no evidence of this in boas, pythons, and their relatives. A recent discovery of male-specific genetic markers reveals that these snakes instead possess XY sex chromosomes.
It has been widely observed that sex-related genes are copied from sex chromosomes and inserted into autosomes, a process termed ‘gene traffic’. However, the adaptive significance of this phenomenon is unclear. Now, direct evidence has been provided that gene traffic may allow functional compensation during meiotic sex chromosome activation.