Comment on How many people would a generation ship need to have for inbreeding to not be an issue?
givesomefucks@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Nah, you’d ideally want 150-200, but 100 (20something and younger) would be fine assuming a random sample from all over.
The danger is the reinforcement of negative recessive genes. So if you just grab 100 from one area, there may already be common dangerous recessives that would become an issue in a few generations.
But grab a random sample of the billions of humans worldwide, you’d have the same number of “dangerous” recessives, just different ones. That would take a long time to spread within the new population.
It’s not like similar DNA is bad, it’s just compounding of recessive genes when there’s no natural selection. Which is why all the big examples of inbreeding is medieval royalty. They didn’t need to be physically/mentally capable of surviving, because they had inherited wealth.
similar DNA is bad actually, the whole point of sexual reproduction is to increase diversity to make the population as robust as possible. If you have a ship full of clones all it takes is one virus/bacteria/fungus mutating in just the wrong way and everyone will get infected.
Like, this is why we got a new type of banana some decades ago, it’s all giant monocultures which is hilariously vulnerable to disease.
I don’t think you realize the genetic diversity even among a close family…
But I have no idea why you’re talking about clones.
Kind of like if I said billionaires shouldn’t exist and you lept to saying that means I want money to not exist anymore
Treczoks@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Even better if the sample is not random, but at least screened for some genetic issues.