Asking for a friend.
By definition, two people of different sexes can’t be clones.
But even if we ignore that, and have an example of say, two XX clones, with artificial sperm creation from stem cells of one of the clones, their child wouldn’t be a clone of the parents, because DNA is double stranded, with two different versions of each chromosome. The child would get a random combination of those chromosomes, different to their parents
I think this is mostly correct.
I think what you mean is that each chromosome has two paired arms that contain alternate versions of functionally the same content. It’s like if you had two cookbooks by different authors that had the same chapters and dishes, but different content. The two versions aren’t in the two strands of DNA, they’re in the two arms of each chromosome.
The problem is that during reproduction, each parent randomly contributes one of the two chromosome halves. When each sperm and each egg is made, there’s a 50-50 chance that it gets arm 1 or arm 2 from each chromosome.
If you were to engage in this exercise (which is tagged “selfcest” if you’re looking for erotic stories about this stuff), you’d encounter the same problem with incestual reproduction: unless the sperm and egg were prepared in a lab or using magic to ensure that each arm of each chromosome went into a different sex cell, you’d inevitably have cases where the sperm and egg both received their chromosome from the same arm.
You have genes from your mom and your dad. But in some regions of this offspring’s genome they’d receive two copies of genes from your mom and no copy of your dad’s, or vice-versa. And we rely on having two different copies as backups. This is why interbreeding produces birth defects and lower fitness: either parent can have a handful of bad genes, but if the other one has a good copy it’s often no biggie. But if you get two copies of the bad ones and no good copy (which is more likely if you marry your cousin or boink your clone) then you have problems.
To summarize, you wouldn’t faithfully duplicate yourself, you’d duplicate most of yourself.
So – assuming the offspring was viable – you’d kind of get a lower quality clone: the offspring would probably look almost like a twin of the original, but they might have worse eyesight. They might be stockier or lankier. They might have thin, anemic blood. They might have oilier skin and hair, or dryer, itchier skin and hair.
“I like pizza, Steve!”
I hope there are others out there that still recognize and use this movie quote 30 years later.
until now, I always assumed that genes for sperm were on the Y chromosome, but I guess they’re not?
The Y chromosome doesn’t carry much of anything. It’s basically just a carrier for the SRY gene, and in most cases, it’s that gene that triggers the majority of the sexual differentiation that occurs in early development. The actual “code” for what develops and how it develops is there for male and female differentiation in all humans, and it’s hormones and other factors that control whether or not that genetic code is expressed.
And in this case, we’re talking about stem cells (ie, a cell that has the potential to develop in to any cell, but hasn’t yet done so), and then artificially triggering those stem cell to develop in to sperm cells. A trick that can be done because the genetic code for it to do so is already there if the conditions are right.
As an aside, this is also why hormone replacement for trans people lets them develop secondary sexual characteristics that they wouldn’t otherwise develop. The code was already there, it just takes the right trigger to get the code expressing (in this case, hormones)
So you’re telling me that somewhere in my biological code is my mom’s tits. And if I just take some estrogen, I can have my mom’s tits?
Your dad’s tits are there too. You might get his.
The Y chromosome does a bit more than just carry the SRY gene.
There is a condition where a father’s SRY gene gets transfered to the X chromosome of a sperm, resulting in a child who is XX and SRY positive. [0]
In all known cases, such men are infertile. Fertility treatment is the main source of diagnoses for this, as that is typically the only symptom.
[0] This is de la Chapelle syndrome, although that syndrome also covers an even rarer situation of an XX SRY-negative child developing as a male.
There is also Swyer syndrome where an XY individual develops as a female (typically due to a defact in SRY). Such individuals general do not go through natural puberty and require hormone therapy.
Yet. Let’s have fun with the topic.
If not exactly identical, would they be like twins?
So a fraternal twin of yourself? Pretty sure it wouldn’t be masturbation at that point, but straight up incest.
If not exactly identical, would they be like twins?
The parents? Basically, as the only difference between them is a single chromosome out of the 26 we carry. There are slight genetic differences between identical twins, due to the accrual of mutations during cell division, but it’s smaller than a full different chromosome. That’s splitting hairs though, because both identical twins and our theoretical clones would be functionally identical.
If not exactly identical, would they be like twins?
If you mean the parents and their child, then they’d be somewhere between identical twin and regular sibling in terms of genetic similarity. Regular siblings on average, share about 50% DNA. Identical twins share 100% DNA. Our theoretical child in this scenario would share around 75% of their parents DNA
Seems like a question for Professor Duncan or Cosima.
no. each clone would produce sex cells with half the genetic information that then gets merged. so it would be in bred beyond in bred. you have one copy of a bad gene that does not express bad because you have a good copy and now there is a 25% chance the child gets two bad copies. this is a simplified explanation of course.
That would be a very bad idea. You’re speedrunning inbreeding: There is a 50% chance both copies of each chromosome are identical. Any gene defect on those chromosomes can’t be mitigated by an intact copy on the other, so the offspring has a much higher chance of suffering from genetic diseases. Compare that to offspring from siblings, who only have 25% chance to get the same copy from both parents.
