Hot on the heels of the Summers controversy, researchers at the University of Heidelberg have found a "hidden" stretch of a half million base pairs on the Y chromosome. As Nature News reports:

The DNA that makes up the chromosome is highly repetitive, making it very difficult to sequence. But in June 2003, researchers in the United States announced that they had done so, and had found 78 genes, including several involved in sperm production.

Now, however, scientists at the University of Heidelberg in Germany have given it another go and found a region of the chromosome that originally went undetected.

When they initially compared the physical map of the chromosome with the cloned sequence, the sequence didn't seem to be long enough, explains team member Gudrun Rappold. "So we took the effort to sort out what was going on."

Gudrun Rappold, one of the scientists involved, says there appears to be eight genes in the region. Though she guesses they might have something to do with male height and disease, we obviously cant rule out influences on cognitive or behavioral patterns just yet.