Biology Forum › Human Biology › Chromosomes
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- November 19, 2009 at 1:36 pm #12310mekamitchellParticipant
Will inheriting extra or insufficient copies of each chromosome be beneficial, detrimenta, or have no effect on offspring? Why?
- November 19, 2009 at 1:50 pm #95082JackBeanParticipant
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 😉 - November 19, 2009 at 4:30 pm #95089koleanParticipant
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. - November 20, 2009 at 2:40 pm #95146MrMisteryParticipant
@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. - November 20, 2009 at 3:38 pm #95147koleanParticipant
True, I do seem to assume animal as the organism in question.
- November 21, 2009 at 2:23 am #95163JackBeanParticipant
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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