samedi 13 novembre 2010

I had a dream one night ...

... yes, it does happen that I get some REM sleep (if remembering a dream when waking is a sure sign of having had such) and no, it was a dream in the sleep, not a day dream (political or otherwise) like MLK's famous "I have a dream" speech.

It happens that I remember no dreaming, only notice myself getting thoughts and sense impressions clearer when waking. It happens that I remember I had a dram involving such and such an oddity, and then forgetting all about it, because I do not want to or cannot reconstruct the dream. But this time I did collect the thoughts to get a somewhat clear sketch of what had gone on before I woke up.

  • A furry animal is designed - whether by speaker voice or by subtitles or simply by thought - as having been born with a trisomy. It survives. It grows up. And ...
  • ...actually mates another animal with a trisomy in precisely the same chromosome pair: which gives rise to:

    • 1/4 normally diploid, i e in that chromosome disomic animals
    • 1/2 animals with trisomy in that chromosome (getting the extra somy from either father or mother) and
    • 1/4 tetrasomic in that chromosome animals.

  • The tetrasomic animals mate. Not with normal animals, not with trisomic animals, but between themselves, and ...
  • ... one day loses contact with the chromosomally normal population. Now they can only mate with other tetrasomic animals, and ...
  • ... a few generations later the four somata of the chromosome pair diversify into two pairs. An animal population now has one chromosome pair more than its ancestors but not by splitting, so the newly twain pairs, replacing a one pair, have a normal chromosomal centricity, not telocentric, not necessarily very acrocentric either. Unless the original pair was so.


That's about when I woke up, or what I came to when remembering what I dreamt before waking up.

And how kind it is of someone to pray to God (or even to the demons, as far as int-ention towards me is concerned) that I get some kind of revelation of how evolution is a scientific possibility, now that there are so many Church men claiming Genesis must be reinterpreted or even ones who replace Apocalypse with "point Omega": if I came to believe in evolution, my harmony with them would be restored, they would not think themselves obliged to consider me as a fool, they would be so happy to welcome me back into full communion!

Now, what wild animals spontaneously do with misfits havingheart problems is not usually keep them alive three generations on a row. I may think Darwinism wrong about why one individual remains alive and another survives, I amy think chance or providence has more to do with it than any life force driving to perfection of species by survival of the fittest, but the scenario I dreamt of involves typically survival of the unfittest.

I do not ask you to take my word for it, do check out trisomy on wikipedia*, will you. There are more pairs than pair 21 that can be trisomic. ALL autosomic trisomies that do not involve spontaneous abortion involve heart troubles in men. ALL non-mozaïque forms of autosomous trisomy in bigger chromosomes gives rise to spontaneous abortion, as does also ALL non-mozaïque forms of triploidy. I do not see any reason why other mammals should have different placentas or hearts.

I am not sure the last step would fix the heart trouble about the formerly tetrasomic new karyotype, but I am sure the heart troubles involved in previous generations leading up to that would make success in competition for mating (and yes, mammals are typically competitive in that respect) rather unlikely.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
G. Pompidou/Beauborg
Paris IV
13/XI/2010

*Trisomy, Wikipedia - if you check links on that article, the diverse trisomies available in human genetic pathology do indicate on article after article heart deficiencies among symptoms. A man once told me his mother had adopted a lot of trisomy 21 lads, because their short life expectancy and immaturity for sin made them his intercessors in Heaven. Whether he lied about that or not (I have heard a lot of lies to test my credulity, and I am slow and polite) is immaterial: the observation about heart trouble is accurate.

PS: if I had been the son of such a mother, I would have been wise to treat my trisomic stepbrothers kindly. If they go to Heaven remembering ones kindness, they might intercede, otherwise their prayers might be like the saints who pray for the humiliation of the enemies of the Holy Church (Apocalypse ch. 11).

PPS: about "chromosome splits", I have already answered in Karyogrammata, modifying in comment that a result of two strictly telomeric chromosomes or one normal and one telomeric from one normal splitting would be possible: but two non-telomeric chromsomes would not be a possible result from such a split.