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View submission: How do genes get passed down?
It's still a lot more likely than not though, right?
Comment by Gonjigz at 27/11/2024 at 11:15 UTC
2 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Depends how close the genes are! The frequency of separate inheritance will be directly proportional to the distance between the genes. In the human genome, a distance of 50 million nucleotides is a rough average for the distance between two genes that is required for them to have a 50% chance of being inherited separately, which is the same as them having no relationship.
50 million nucleotides is a lot, but some chromosomes are several times larger than this. Chromosome 1, the largest chromosome, is about 250 million bases, which means that if a gene is located near one end then it will inherit independently of the other 80% of the chromosome.
These are all super rough estimates but I hope they demonstrate the point that there are many pairs of genes you could select in the human genome that share a chromosome but will be inherited essentially randomly due to recombination.