With respect to Cc, Jeremy points out:
With respect to Cc, Jeremy points out:
It turns out
biologists (or at least my Dad) were not at all surprised when the cats
turned out to be so different. Despite the fact that CG has made us
assume that all clones of, say,
a notorious bounty hunter would
look exactly like, say, the same notorious bounty hunter, it turns out
that complex organisms such ourselves are, well, more complex. Despite
the vast differences that can arise from environmental influences,
during early development, certain chromosomes turn off in different
cells, apparently at random, resulting in a vastly different genetic
expressions.Example: having two X-chromosomes firing off in the same
cell is apparently very bad, and so one switches off in cells early on.
Result: a case of fraternal twins (sisters) with one being normal and
the other being severely retarded because in one case, the “bad”
X-chromosome is active in the cells that become the brain, while the
other this is not the case. A textbook example involves, you guessed
it, calico cats where the different colorations arise from different
X-chromosomes be activated in the respective regions (note: all calico
cats are female).My Dad told me about this in the context of pissing off the Vatican
since this shows that individual identity (and hence individual
biological value) is not determined at conception.Sorry
for the book, but I think I’m just getting pissed at the media who
can’t accurately report a technical story to save their miserable,
worthless lives.-j