An Aroma of Complexity: How the Unique Genetics of Aromatase (CYP19A1) Explain Diverse Phenotypes From Hens and Hyenas to Human Gynecomastia, and Testicular and Other Tumors

摘要

T nated human culture for millennia, at least since Pha- raoh Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten) and his family ruled Egypt; medical journals still discuss whether or not his son, Tutankhaten (Tutankhamun), had gynecomastia (1). There is no question that a breast for “male” activities was at least as impractical as the Amazons had discovered— they underwent right mastectomy so that they could use their bows or throw their javelin better—and that femi- ninity (at least in the eyes of culture) depended on the presence of breast, as Saint Agatha of Sicily found when she underwent bilateral mastectomy as part of her faith- defending torture. The medical term we use today, “gy- necomastia,” is indicative of these cultural assumptions; it defines the presence, in a male, of “waotés” (breast in Greek) as if he were a “yuvaixa” (female in Greek).