Biology Forum Human Biology Chromosomes

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    • #12310
      mekamitchell
      Participant

      Will inheriting extra or insufficient copies of each chromosome be beneficial, detrimenta, or have no effect on offspring? Why?

    • #95082
      JackBean
      Participant

      Insufficient copies will be probably always detrimenta, if that means bad 😆
      Extra copies could be beneficial, if there where some good genes*), but usually that leads to various genetic disorders, like the Down syndrome. Look at these links
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_disorder
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genetic_disorders
      😉

      EDIT
      *) and vice versa, deletion could be beneficial, if bad genes were deleted 😉

    • #95089
      kolean
      Participant

      It would all be detrimental, since you stated whole chromosomes. It all has to do with dosage compensation of gene products. This is why even the double X chromosomes in females has to have one of the chromosomes be inactivated, so as not to cause detrimental effects to the organism. While the only X in the male (along with the Y chromosome) is fully activated.
      Balance is the key. You can not have too little of one gene product and too much of a gene product.

    • #95146
      MrMistery
      Participant

      @kolean
      not necessarily. Yes in humans that is the case. But for example in plants poliploidy is often seemed and it has been a beneficial thing for plants in cold climates. And if you have an organism like an ophioglossum fern which has its genome divided between around n=600 chromosomes, an extra chromosome has so few genes that it may just be beneficial in some environments.

    • #95147
      kolean
      Participant

      True, I do seem to assume animal as the organism in question.

    • #95163
      JackBean
      Participant

      Yeah, people usually assume animals as all organisms…
      But in this case, as is it in Human Biology, you were probably right:)

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