WASHINGTON - Senator Chuck Grassley today announced that Iowa State University has received a grant of $150,000 from the National Science Foundation.
The funds will be used to help pay for a genes and genomes research project titled “Collaborative Research: Sex Chromosome Evolution in Turtles." Sex is determine by the sex chromosome pairs XX and XY in humans, or ZZ or ZW in birds, but in certain other animals sex is determined by environmental temperature. Among turules, examples of both types of sex determination can be found and this research is aimed at resolving why different sex determining mechanisms exist.