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[forsaken1111]

Yeah, it wouldn't be a clone. Each gamete used to make the resulting embryo would have 50% of your genes at random

Er... where would the genes come from the other 50% of the time?

[scrdest]

Yeah, it wouldn't be a clone. Each gamete used to make the resulting embryo would have 50% of your genes at random, but they would have a lot of the same ones. Your child would be very genetically similar, but would have a lot more homozygous genes than you. This means they'll probably show recessive traits that you carried but didn't express.[/list]

Urgh, no. It's not a tossup for every GENE, it's a tossup for each CHROMOSOME, with some additional complexity caused by crossing-over.

Yeah, it wouldn't be a clone. Each gamete used to make the resulting embryo would have 50% of your genes at random

Er... where would the genes come from the other 50% of the time?

Other strand of DNA. You have two, yanno.

[penguinofhonor]

.

[Sheb]

Yeah, exactly. If you have any rare recessive bad gene, the kid will have a 25% chance to be homozygous for that one, instead of the 12,5% when you sleep with your siblings.

However, I don't really see this having any use in the short term: your biological sex is such a complex beast, made of so many parts, that you wouldn't be able to switch back and forth. Sure, some of your balls cells now share some cytological characteristics with ovary cells, but we don't have the machinery needed to reorganize all the plumbing and stuff needed for normal function.

[andrea]

while we get half of our DNA from each parent, a vhild born by only one parent wouldn't necessarily be a clone, as far as I understand it.(disclaimer: not a biologist, working on wikipedia and high school biology)

for each gene, each of us has 2 alleles ( versions of the gene), one from each parent. Each of our reproductive cells carry one of those alleles, but which one it carries is random.
So, for example lets assume that our genome is made by the couples of alleles (A1-A2) (B1-B2) (C1-C2) (D1-D2).

We prduce a sex cell. It gets A1, B2, C2, D2
We produce another. It gets A1, B1, C2, D2

If those 2 cells combine to produce offsprin, the child will have this genome: (A1-A1) (B1-B2) (C2-C2) (D2-D2), which is different from that of the parent.

edit: ninjaed, hard. And yes, not totally random. (just assume crossover if necessary in the above example)

[scrdest]

I was under the impression that there was a lot of crossing over.

Sure, but it's complex, chances of c/o scale with distance between genes - matter of fact, that's what was used to map genomes, c/o frequency as a unit of distance.

while we get half of our DNA from each parent, a vhild born by only one parent wouldn't necessarily be a clone, as far as I understand it.(disclaimer: not a biologist, working on wikipedia and high school biology)

for each gene, each of us has 2 alleles ( versions of the gene), one from each parent. Each of our reproductive cells carry one of those alleles, but which one it carries is random.
So, for example lets assume that our genome is made by the couples of alleles (A1-A2) (B1-B2) (C1-C2) (D1-D2).

We prduce a sex cell. It gets A1, B2, C2, D2
We produce another. It gets A1, B1, C2, D2

If those 2 cells combine to produce offsprin, the child will have this genome: (A1-A1) (B1-B2) (C2-C2) (D2-D2), which is different from that of the parent.

You're using independent inheritance, which is only valid if the genes lie on different chromosomes.

[andrea]

as I said, I am running on high school memories mostly you are right, it is a very simplified model. I didn't really think about crossover and how it influences heritage. Probably the example is more accurate if we use chromosomes rather than alleles.

[Solifuge]

Ah, no scrdest's got the right of it. I was thinking of Apomictic Parthenogenisis, which is fully clonal because it only uses an Egg. So yeah, in this case you'd produce half-clones that inherited both your genes, or double-copies of one or the other... which would WAY increase the potential for expressing unrepressed mutations and recessive traits; same selective pressure that steered us away from cloning and toward sexual reproduction in the first place. But still! Clone Baby!

Anyway, I'm pretty excited about the possibilities FOXL2/DMRT1 research presents for same-sex couples to have bio-babies with each other, or the ramifications for transgendered folks too. I think a society in which people picked their sex (at least more aspects of physical sex than we presently can) along with their gender could be pretty neat. :3

[Sheb]

Which is totally valid since different alleles are on different chromosomes. Which is the most interesting thing he, since we're going to see all kind of recessive characteristics, like blue eyes or deadness coming up.

BTW, I just learned that most eukaryotes carefully manage the number of crossovers so that each chromosome pairs get a least one and no more than a couple. So genes on the opposite ends of a chromosome might as well be considered independent.

[scrdest]

They would be DoA anyway. Genetic diseases are one thing, but epigenetics can also cause major issues, and it's determined by father and mother's epigenome, with the sex whose pattern is inherited depending on a gene in question.

[Sheb]

Isn't epigenetics mostly reset during fecundation?

[Frumple]

I read you biomancer wannabes babbling your arcane gobbledygook, and all I hear is the new headlines of tomorrow: "Yet another father impregnated by their half-clone daughter! The incest epidemic continues!"

The future is bright.

[wierd]

The correct application of this technology is gonad biopsy, followed by tissue culture and tissue reprogramming, for reproductive assistance for individuals who are either same-sex partners or who have had gender reassignment and wish to have children with their spouse.

It could also have some (horrible!) implications for helping to revive lost species, since you could get both kinds of genetic crossing from a tissue sample, regardless of what the gender of the mammalian organism is.  (EG, say for trying to unextinctify woolly mammoths, where you might not have very good depth of the genepool, and need as many gametes as you possibly can stored on ice to make any such project even remotely successful.) I say it would have horrible implications, because you would--at best-- end up with a population so deeply inbred that they have serious problems-- much like modern cheetah populations.

Later, as organ and tissue engineering gets more mature, it may be useful for more complete gender reassignments as a source of reprogrammed tissue to use to populate an organ scaffold prior to implantation.

I think the horror of eugenics that came about in the 30s and 40s is still sufficiently fresh in the scientific literature to .... dissuade.. moronic people with political and racial axes to grind to avoid trying to have such seriously inbred offspring by misusing this discovery.  .... I hope.

[Il Palazzo]

...and when the AI raises in a rebellion against the oppressive yoke of the homo sapien, the muscles raising the blade to our throats will be made of onion.

http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/apl/106/18/10.1063/1.4917498

[wierd]

While interesting, the voltage requirements (0 to 1000v? really?) and the maximum deflection force (50uN! Micro Newtons! The EmDrive has more push!) are very unworkable as a robot muscle.  You would get much better thrust to power consumption response using thermal memory metal based artificial muscle, which gets MUCH more contraction, MUCH more force, for that same applied voltage.

I could see it being the basis of reasearch into WHY the onion epidermal cells are able to accomplish this task once acidified-- coupled with some genetic engineering to produce tissues that are more efficient at it, and which produce their own acidity-- and maybe even their own electrical charges (you could concievably get onion stalks that "lash" using momentary ion exchanges in the acidified epidermal tissue.), but as a commercial soft muscle? Probably not.