In a message dated 11/24/2006 7:31:45 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
What I thought Alberto was getting at was "how do the maternal and paternal chromosomes fit together?" Here's my picture of the problem, where the two parents have different numbers of copies of gene 'B': ...ABBBCDE... (Maternal) ...ABBBBBCDE... (Paternal) Won't the A,C,D and E genes pair up, leaving an isolated loop of extra Bs in one of the child's chromosomes? Continuing, I guess the answer is "sometimes that's not a big deal, the extra Bs can be tucked safely out of the way". But this might explain why only some genes have multiple copies--sometimes having different copy numbers would be bad. The genome is already messy. The notion that are chromosomes have a neat lineup of genes is incorrect. There are insertions into the middle of genes (introns). Many genes are spread over discontinuous aspects of a single chromosome. Some insertions into the middle of genes destroy function but many do not. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
