6065833@pucc.UUCP (05/26/87)
Craig Werner writes, regarding a discussion of "apemen": >> This ignores the fact that Apes have 48 chromosomes and >>humans have 46, and sounds more like somebody's idea of a hoax, >>or a typical article from the National Enquirer. Anthony Pelletier writes: >Craig, if you mean second year student, say second year student. >Once again you show your passion for facts without any real understanding >of what they mean. I do not for a moment suggest that the article about >the chimp/human hybrid is necessarily true. >I do, however, wish to point out that >you reason for declaring it false is irrelevent. [...] >In fact, due to heterosis, the hybrid is superior in many ways to either >parent [...] >The rather cute trick that plants such as triticum aestivum (wheat) >have used to produce fertile new species from a sterile hybrid is to >undergo endo-reduplication to produce a 2n (6x, in the case of wheat) >plant. My favorite example of viable hybridization is rapeseed, which is currently grown in Canada and Europe. Rapeseed is the product of a cabbage and (if I recall correctly) turnip cross which first occured in a monastery vegetable garden in the middle ages, according to acquaintances at Uni. Goettingen's plant genetics lab (in West Germany). The cross has been duplicated in labs recently. The "parent" plants have different numbers of chromosomes, and the cross is, I believe, polyploid, and fertile. What I found interesting was that the plant was cultivated and preserved for a thousand years ONLY in vegetable gardens. I wish people were as good at preserving wild species. This plant, by the way, is a good example if punctuated evolution. Una Smith 6065833@PUCC
werner@aecom.YU.EDU (Craig Werner) (05/28/87)
In article <2805@pucc.Princeton.EDU>, 6065833@pucc.Princeton.EDU (Una Smith) writes: > Craig Werner writes, regarding a discussion of "apemen": > >> This ignores the fact that Apes have 48 chromosomes and > >>humans have 46, and sounds more like somebody's idea of a hoax, > >>or a typical article from the National Enquirer. And close to a dozen remind me about horses, donkeys, and mules. However, that's not what I meant by bringing up the 46/48 dichotomy. The article original Enquirer-esqe article described the phenotype of the Ape-Human hybrids as though they could be described by a simple intra-species/inter-variety cross. The answer is not quite so simple. What I was really referring to is the extreme intolerance of the human species for trisomies, of which Trisomies at the sex chromosomes and in the misnamed Chromosome 21 are the only two that are compatible with life in a majority of cases. Many of the rest are viable for the early stages of development, but do not survive full-term. In addition, many of the other gross chromosomal abnormalites result in severe mental deficiency, and it is unclear whether any offspring, even if viable, would match the description in the original article. It was late, so I made the comment short, expecting it either to die or be elaborated on. Instead people followup with the obvious, and give a few twists to the proverbial knife in several cases. Well, I agree that half a posting is usually worse than one at all, and I shouldn't have posted that half-posting, even as a followup for such an outlandish Ape-Man story. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Final note: personal to Uma Smith, whose mail seems always to bounce, and who started an amazingly long and unneccessary discusion about me, and by whose inclusion of far too many lines of text in the article I am currently following up, seems to bear me a personal grudge. I looked back at my posting that got you upset. Frankly, I don't understand why. If I am correct, the posting involved pro-chiral centers. I posted. You followed up. Your followup was perfectly correct, except it was completely irrelevant to my original posting. I clarified my position, yours being too long to even touch, and added the extraneous comment that I did not have time to comment on it. I cannot see that as a sexist statement, particularly when at the time, I thought that you, like Uma Maitra, were male. My address is below. Try to use it, please! -- Craig Werner (MD/PhD '91) !philabs!aecom!werner (1935-14E Eastchester Rd., Bronx NY 10461, 212-931-2517) "Reading is sometimes an ingenius device for avoiding thought."