Re: DNA growth... Where and how does this happen?


"Tim Tyler" <tim@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:ddt3t7$bbm$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> William L Hunt <wlhunt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote or quoted:
> Male gametes can withstand it because they small and rapidly mass-
> produced - and quality is not such an issue, because:
>
> * sperm are raced - and the dud ones tend not to win;
>
> * females have a lot to lose if a damaged egg is fertilised; whereas males
> often have lower levels of parental investment, and in nature, they tend
> not to care so much if one of their offspring doesn't get properly off
> the ground.

My intuition tells me that those sperm that actually succeed in fertilizing
an egg should be of equal "quality" to those eggs that succeed in getting
fertilized. But I haven't succeeded in constructing a convincing argument
for this intuition. Any one else have some ideas?

There is something odd about sperm competition. Sperm that are "duds"
because they carry genes for some developmental defect are probably not
contraselected. (Nor are eggs). What sperm actually compete at is a
kind of marathon. But many of the genes that might lead to success in
that marathon live in the mitochondria, and those genes are discarded.
Why run the marathon if the winning genes are not the ones passed to
progeny? (At least I THINK that sperm get their energy by respiration.
It is not all fermentative glycolysis, right?).


.

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