February 20, 2019 Wednesday
Bedtime Story
Our Ephemeral Existence is a Product of Randomness
It is this random and utter chaos in the
tiny environment within the cells that generates complexity of immense
proportions which allows emergent behavior such as life and simulation of
consciousness to arise.
Your very own origins, Mon Ami, is based
upon randomness.
Which sperm fertilizes a given egg, if at
all one does among the millions in a single ejaculate, depends on the random
details of the sperm and fluid motion.
Although the first ejaculation in a human
ape male child occurs on average twelve months after reaching puberty not only
is the volume of the semen small (less than 1 ml) but almost in 90% of cases
the semen lacks sperm.
Even those 10% of few males who do manage
to produce sperms during their first ejaculations have defunct sperms; meaning
that majority of the sperms (roughly 97%) lack the motility and thus inability
to fertilize any egg if they do happen to encounter one.
The number of sperms per ejaculate from
then on continues to rise till it reaches its peak concentration of 300 million
sperms per milliliter at the age of 24.
Even the volume of semen reaches it maximum
at this age of 3.5 ml (quite a low volume in contrast to any male ape’s
expectations or imagination but economically optimum since nature must have
tinkered with greater and lesser volumes).
So roughly a robust healthy male ape at the
age of 24 would be ejaculating 1050 million sperms per ejaculate (it must be
said that several factors determine the number of sperms in any one single
ejaculate such as testosterone levels, stress, age and the time since the last
ejaculation).
So it is these many sperms who vie with
each other to fertilize the egg they would encounter (majority of sperms that
have ever ejaculated I can guarantee do not even remotely stand a chance to
encounter any egg) and which one will do depends on randomness and chance more
than anything else.
Each sperm is genetically different thanks
to the inherent randomness that accompanies their formation in the process of
meiosis in the stage of first prophase.
Prophase I is the longest phase of meiosis
where genetic shuffling takes place through the process what is known as
homologous recombination.
Both sperms and eggs are formed through the
process of meiosis get one version of the two versions of the 23 chromosomes
through chromosomal crossover during the Prophase I of the first stage of
meiosis that is neither alike any of the later two.
This crossover is an absolutely random
process that is the prime source of the much needed genetic variation resulting
on the new combinations of alleles.
Though I have used these two terms “homologous
recombination” and “crossover” synonymously and to some extent they are it must
be emphasized that homologous recombination is a more general genetic process
which is a type of genetic recombination.
Recombination is most commonly used by the
body to repair the breaks in the DNA that happen on both the strands
simultaneously.
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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