[W]hat if, immediately after sex, meiosis was postponed, and a multicellular diploid organism grew as it does in animals. But then, instead of making haploid eggs and sperm that must fuse to form another diploid organism, the diploid creature made a haploid reproductive cell called a spore that simply grows asexually into a multicellular haploid organism? When mature, this haploid multicellular organism would then make eggs and sperm by mitosis (instead of meiosis, as in our ovaries and testes), and voila! The circle of life is complete.Via Metafilter, where the question is asked: "Astonishing secret or dry old factoid freshman level biology professors tell a classroom of kids who aren't listening?"
May 13, 2013
"Mosses Make Two Different Plants From the Same Genome..."
"... and a Single Gene Can Make the Difference."
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9 comments:
"Interesting but dry factoid I learned in 9th grade."
LOL. What I heard was: blah blah blah blah voila!
Ditto CEO-MMP. I kept reading, waiting for the astonishing secret, and at the end it was just basic botany. Wait 'til they hear about the sex lives of jellyfish.
Not sure about the question you asked, Althouse (I wasn't listening either) but the possibilities for undermining traditional marriage and reproduction are what really capture people's interest.
There are four words in that paragraph, repeatedly used, that I don't understand the meaning of. Blah blah blah is right.
I guy I knew in school was always talking about the hole in Relativity.
But what if the haploid multicellular organism is gay?
Very confusing.
See also James Tiptree, Jr's novella "Your Haploid Heart".
The real problem with haploids and diploids is that they keep changing the plug-ins so the beautiful piano music goes unheard to nine tiny arranged anims that show this in Spanish. Until I change it again to catch up with external changes.
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