Earth_Muffin

Depends on whether the initial carrier is homozygous or heterozygous as to how many offspring would be affected and to how profound the affects would be. For instance, in a society in which there is an "alpha male" perse, who produces a total of 8 offspring, as a homozygous carrier the mutation could occur in as many as 4 of the offspring, whereas if he was a heterozygous carrier, the mutation could occur in as many as 2. If the initial carrier is female, the likelihood of affecting a large portion of the population is somewhat reduced, as females are limited as to how many offspring they can produce in a lifetime. If a female homozygous carrier produced 4 offspring, 2 could potentially become carriers, whereas if she was a heterozygous carrier, the chances of passing the mutation to offspring is reduced to perhaps 25% at best, which, if she produced 4 offspring, 1 would be affected. Moving on to the second generation, you can see from the above model how these numbers would multiply, providing the mutation was favorable to natural selection. It should be noted that negative mutations often do not simply "die out". I doubt there is a single person in the world population that is not a carrier for some harmful genetic mutation, whether it be Tay Sachs, sickle cell, or whatever the case may be. What's important to note here is that being a carrier doesnt necessarily mean the "mutant" gene will present itself. It should also be noted that some mutations that are considered harmful also have benefits to those within the region where the mutation first presented itself. For instance, persons in which sickle cell is present also carry some resistance to malaria.

If we disregard the Young Earth Creation argument of a 6,000 year old earth and 6-day creation event, we're left with Intelligent Design, which attempts to use scientific evidence and methods to explain the world's creation and the biblical "miracles", such as the flood and parting of the Red Sea... The problem here is that Intelligent Design has come to a point of disarming God, so to speak. If the Great Flood can be explained in scientific terms, it is no longer the work of God but rather a natural and explainable occurance. If we can explain the parting of the Red Sea, same thing happens. God is all but taken out of the picture. (These are just two examples, mind you.) It seems as if the whole "theory" of Intelligent Design holds that God is miraculously responsible only for what we otherwise cant explain (which is how religions are created in the first place). The only thing holding Intelligent Design together are the holes in scientific theories, such as the sketchy fossil record, especially that regarding hominid evolution. Personally, I believe that once you have 60 pieces of a 100 piece puzzle you have enough to see the big picture. The big picture shows the theory of evolution.

I appologize for bringing back a topic that apparently died more than a month ago. As you can see from the number of posts I've contributed to the forum, I am new here. At any rate, I ran across this website while researching the claim that Neandertals had 48 chromosomes. (I've yet to find any evidence supporting that claim, by the way.) Regarding hybridization... It would be virtually impossible to cross-breed a modern homo sapiens with a modern chimpanzee, despite the fact that we share 97% of our DNA and 20 of our 23 haploid chromosomes are nearly identicle to those of chimpanzees. Why? Homo sapiens have 23 chromosomes, chimpanzees have 24. It is widely believed that the chimpanzee chromosomes 11 and 13 make up human chromosome 2, thus reducing the number of chromosomes in humans from 24 to 23 (haploid) / 48 to 46 (diploid). I've seen it mentioned on other forums that it should be possible to cross-breed human beings and chimpanzees and that the result would be a hybrid with 47 chromosomes rather than 48. Not likely, and here's why: Monosomies are almost always fatal. The only exception I have seen is the deletion of an "X" chromosome in females with Turner's Syndrome. All other monosomies are lethal. To have 47 chromosomes in a human-chimpanzee hybrid, the 47th chromosome would be unpaired and thus dysfunctional, more than likely incompatible with life beyond the first few weeks following conception---providing conception and implantation were to occur. Besides the possibility of the "extra" or 47th chromosome resulting in a monosomy, the other possibility is of a full trisomy, which are also potentially fatal. In human-human fertilization, the only trisomies which have proven to be compatible with life whatsoever beyond the second trimester in-utero are trisomies 13, 18 and 21, with 21 being the only compatible with life beyond the first few years. Throwing chimpanzee chromosomes in the mix makes it more unlikely that such trisomies would be compatible with life. The only other possibility is, in fact, the centric fusing of chimpanzee chromosomes 11 and 13 and the subsequent pairing with human chromosome 2. And I dont know that chimp chromosomes 11 and 13 have ever fused in the wild and resulted in a surviving offspring, though this clearly would have had to have happened among our hominid ancestors when the switch from 48 to 46 chromosomes occurred. (Of course we must also keep in mind that chimpanzees are NOT our ancestors, but rather cousins who evolved parallel with us from a common ancestor some 5-7 million years ago.) How does this relate to the question of Neandertal - homo sapiens hybridization? It has been theorized that Neandertals may have had 48 chromosomes. If that were the case, it would have been nearly, if not flat-out impossible for hybridization to occur.