Robin Williams

This week you met Professor Jenny Graves at La Trobe University and she has composed a whole oratorio, a secular follow-up to Haydn's creation.

And now she has a new book and news, I hope, about my disappearing Y chromosome.

Yes.

Robin, I don't know about yours specifically, but yes, the human Y chromosome is a shadow of its former self and it has been in the news lately.

So the International Olympic Committee recently announced that it will test athletes for a gene on the Y chromosome to determine if the athlete can compete in the female category.

So I visited Jenny at her berry farm on the outskirts of Melbourne to talk about this test and that new book you mentioned, which she started writing after a brush with death.

You've studied sex chromosomes since the 1960s?

And you've published loads of big papers that have changed the way we think about the mammalian genome.

You've won a formidably long list of prizes and, of course, appeared on the Science Show quite a few times.

One finding, though, you've been quite famous for is this disappearing, dwindling Y chromosome in humans.

What was the reaction when you first came out with that calculation?

So on the Y chromosome, one of those genes is called SRY and it's been in the news a bit lately because the International Olympic Committee has decided that they will test for this gene to determine if an athlete can compete as female.

But there are issues with this.

Now, you have a new book out.

And in the very first sentence, you say that sex chromosomes are nothing but trouble.

And it's a bold way of starting a book called Sex, Genes and Chromosomes.

Now, your book has been more than 30 years in the making or writing.

When did you decide to start writing it and why?

Professor Jenny Graves from La Trobe University.

That book again is called Sex, Genes and Chromosomes.