Naked Science Forum
General Science => General Science => Topic started by: gecko on 26/03/2006 09:40:44
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i was having a self-serving, ego-filled discussion with my fantastical mystical-thinking friend the other day. we were talking about moving to an uninhabited pacific island with beautiful women of 21 different ethnicities. we talked about how our procreation with them(genetically speaking) should be done to insure there is not alot of repeated genes and unintentional imbreeding.
could it be done? my friend was sure it could, but i wasnt so sure since all the first children would have to be 50% related to each one of us.
would we need to introduce more males? i hope not...
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it wouldn't be the greatest idea from the stand point of diversity in your gene pool. but its most likely possible.
Are YOUR mice nude? [;)]
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Assuming that each generation is separate from the previous, then all of your respective grandchildren will be cousins (i.e. each grandchild will be the grandchild of the same two grandfathers, the only two grandfathers on the island).
I said that this depends upon generations not overlapping. If you allow that some of these 25 women might also mate with your sons, then you can create a situation where some of the grandchildren will not be related to both of the grandfathers resident on the island.
Even with overlapping generations, you cannot get away from the fact that all of the Y chromosomes of all future generations on the island must be derived from the only two males on the island; but luckily the Y chromosome does not carry a great number of genes.
All other chromosomes will be from one of 27 individuals, so it will amount to a serious genetic constriction, but not necessarily pure inbreeding.
George
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quote:
Originally posted by gecko
i was having a self-serving, ego-filled discussion with my fantastical mystical-thinking friend the other day. we were talking about moving to an uninhabited pacific island with beautiful women of 21 different ethnicities. we talked about how our procreation with them(genetically speaking) should be done to insure there is not alot of repeated genes and unintentional imbreeding.
could it be done? my friend was sure it could, but i wasnt so sure since all the first children would have to be 50% related to each one of us.
would we need to introduce more males? i hope not...
Can I cum ?...sorry...I meant can I come ?...nope...right first time I guess !! [;)]
Men are the same as women, just inside out !
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I am not sure hoe much of a problem the only one Y chromosome would be... does anyone know if there is any swapping of genetic information between the X and Y chromosomes like all the others? If not then surely as long as you have a healthy Y chromosome to start with, you will never get 2 copies of it so inbreeding isn't a problem.
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the problem is that there is no such things as a "healthy" or "unhealthy" chromosome. the only ting that makes a population genetically healthy is diversity. lack of diversity in a population is always bad (unless it gets to the level wheere the poopulation is so diverse that its members cannot even mate with eachother, but that is a VERY extreme case)
problems would arise if some new environmental challenge arose (best example being a new pathogen/disease). The more diversity that there is in the population, the greater the chance of some individual(s) not being able to vercome this challenge (in the case of a disease, not being fully succeptable)
if no such challenge ever arose, then there's no reason why one male and one female couldn't repopulate the earth (or in this case the island) but there will always be new challenges that arise, making 2 males qand 25 females a very small gene pool to start from.
Are YOUR mice nude? [;)]