{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1534",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "whorl",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1534,
    "subject": "genetics and me",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2002-01-09T05:33:07+00:00",
    "last": "2002-01-09T05:33:07+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0013-whorl.v012.n185.5@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "maa32",
        "address": "maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu"
      },
      "date": "2002-01-09T05:33:07+00:00",
      "subject": "genetics and me",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "And, in case my vast knowledge of genetics surprised any of you, I really do \nhave an undergraduate degree in Biochemistry from Notre Dame ... \nUnfortunately, I got tired of lab work and no longer do anything related to \nscience.  \nA bottleneck effect occurs when a population is stuck in a small area and \ntheir is no new genetic material that comes in, increasing the frequency of \nsome mutations since recessives eventually meet.  The post-flood Urth would \nhave experienced just such a limiting of available creatures and land mass, \nleaving only a little room for variation in the creatures.  In a small \npopulation like that, mutations can occur at a highly accelerated rate, \npossibly evolving into a species that can no longer breed with the original in \na comparitively small number of generations.  \nInterestingly enough, when you hybridize two plants, you often get a doubling \nof chromosomes (but not always a doubling of expression, of course)\nA genome that contains three or more full copies of the haploid chromosome \nnumber are polyploid. As a general rule polyploids can be tolerated in plants, \nbut are rarely found in animals. One reason is that the sex balance is         \nimportant in animals and variation from the diploid number results in \nsterility. Those few animals, such as brine shrimp,that avoid the hazards of \npolyploidy, utilize parthenogenesis, the development of the an individual from \nan egg without fertilization, to initiate embryo development. In light of \nthis, let's go back and examine in chapter 17 (or was it 19?) in Return to the \nWhorl in which the mating habits of the inhumu are discussed at such great \nlength as if they were important.  Maybe they are.  I think Gene knows all \nthis stuff.  He is the master.  The life of Blue has been mutated from plants, \nand the genetics of plants account for the doubling of limbs.  Alleluia.  I \nhave done it."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}