2 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: How do genes get passed down?
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.
Comment by Justmyoponionman at 27/11/2024 at 11:40 UTC*
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Ok. I had no idea the statistical likelihood was that high. I would have put it at least an order of magnitude lower.
Just read up on it. Learned something today. Cheers!