Sex Cells
So I had this really interesting conversation yesterday. It started with me reading a book called "The Seven Daughters of Eve" that talks about tracking ancestry through mitochondrial DNA.
I've always thought it was interesting that mitochondrial DNA only comes from your mother. Because in the sperm it is in the tail and falls off as the egg is fertilized. But, I learned something even more interesting about it, sorry to all the biologists out there for whom this is old news. Mitochondrial DNA is none nuclear it is not a part of your chromosomes. And, it has a shape like a plasmoid or bacteria. What it does is ATP production, it basically makes energy from oxygen. What is cool about this is that X million years ago( if this offends you you can pretend that the invisible bearded man in the sky did it 5,000 years ago) a bacteria decides that it is easier to live inside a nice safe cell wall and a cell decides that hey this is nice I have a lot more energy when this bacteria is around. We have this odd symbiotic relationship going on in every one of our cells. It just blows my mind that we are carrying this bacteria around. I mean I understand that we have ton's of virus DNA carried around in our chromosomes, but this is different it is non-nuclear.
OK well we were discussing this in a little group and came upon an even more bizarre notion.
So we think of ourselves as being the "animal" and that our sperm and egg are the sex cells or the reproductive vehicles for the human animal. What if you think of it as the other way around. We are just these big walking sex animals built by eggs & sperm for their reproduction - we are the sex cells.
OK I'm really rambling now, but it was a fun discussion and I figured I would share.
I've always thought it was interesting that mitochondrial DNA only comes from your mother. Because in the sperm it is in the tail and falls off as the egg is fertilized. But, I learned something even more interesting about it, sorry to all the biologists out there for whom this is old news. Mitochondrial DNA is none nuclear it is not a part of your chromosomes. And, it has a shape like a plasmoid or bacteria. What it does is ATP production, it basically makes energy from oxygen. What is cool about this is that X million years ago( if this offends you you can pretend that the invisible bearded man in the sky did it 5,000 years ago) a bacteria decides that it is easier to live inside a nice safe cell wall and a cell decides that hey this is nice I have a lot more energy when this bacteria is around. We have this odd symbiotic relationship going on in every one of our cells. It just blows my mind that we are carrying this bacteria around. I mean I understand that we have ton's of virus DNA carried around in our chromosomes, but this is different it is non-nuclear.
OK well we were discussing this in a little group and came upon an even more bizarre notion.
So we think of ourselves as being the "animal" and that our sperm and egg are the sex cells or the reproductive vehicles for the human animal. What if you think of it as the other way around. We are just these big walking sex animals built by eggs & sperm for their reproduction - we are the sex cells.
OK I'm really rambling now, but it was a fun discussion and I figured I would share.