There's some really weird stuff coming out of the study of DNA. The new Nature is a special issue focusing on the Y chomosome. My favorite revelation so far is this weird bit from The male-specific region of the human Y chromosome is a mosaic of discrete sequence classes, explaining that palindromes encode some of the protiens expressed in the testes:

Eight palindromes comprising 25% of MSY euchromatin The most pronounced structural features of the ampliconic regions of Yq are eight massive palindromes (Table 3). In the dot plot of Fig. 5a, the longer palindromes are visible as vertical blue lines that approach the baseline. An MSY map highlighting all eight palindromes is shown in Fig. 3a. In all eight palindromes, the arms are highly symmetrical, with arm-to-arm nucleotide identities of 99.94-99.997%. (By convention, these percentage identities refer only to nucleotide substitutions and do not take account of insertions and deletions by which palindrome arms differ.) The palindromes are long, their arms ranging from 9Ýkb to 1.45ÝMb in length. They are imperfect in that each contains a unique, non-duplicated spacer, 2-170Ýkb in length, at its centre. Palindrome P1 is particularly spectacular, having a span of 2.9ÝMb, an arm-to-arm identity of 99.97%, and bearing two secondary palindromes (P1.1 and P1.2, each with a span of 24Ýkb) within its arms13. The eight palindromes collectively comprise 5.7ÝMb, or one-quarter of the MSY euchromatin.

Six of the eight palindromes carry recognized protein-coding genes, all of which seem to be expressed specifically in testes (Fig. 3b). In all known cases of genes on MSY palindromes, identical or nearly identical gene copies exist on opposite arms of the palindrome. Of the nine multi-copy, protein-coding gene families identified so far in the MSY, eight have members on palindromes. Indeed, six families are located exclusively in palindromes. These include the DAZ genes, which exist in four copies -- two in palindrome P1 and two in P2 -- and the CDY genes, which also occur in four copies -- two in P1 and two in P5 (Fig. 3b). In addition, the palindromes contain at least seven families of apparently non-coding transcription units, all expressed exclusively or predominantly in testes (Fig. 3e).

The world is stranger than we think!

Further (in Abundant gene conversion between arms of palindromes in human and ape Y chromosomes), these palindromes predate the divergence of our species from chimpanzees:

Using comparative sequencing in great apes, we demonstrate here that at least six of these MSY palindromes predate the divergence of the human and chimpanzee lineages, which occurred about 5 million years ago. The arms of these palindromes must have subsequently engaged in gene conversion, driving the paired arms to evolve in concert.

And finally, another article rewrites British history:

A new survey of Y chromosomes in the British Isles suggests that the Anglo-Saxons failed to leave as much of a genetic stamp on the UK as history books imply.

Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, Vikings and Normans invaded Britain repeatedly between 50 BC and AD 1050. Many historians ascribe much of the British ancestry to the Anglo-Saxons because their written legacy overshadows that of the Celts.

But the Y chromosomes of the regions tell a different story. "The Celts weren't pushed to the fringes of Scotland and Wales; a lot of them remained in England and central Ireland," says study team member David Goldstein, of University College London. This is surprising: the Anglo-Saxons reputedly colonized southern England heavily.