Quote:
Originally Posted by PhiGam
Usually when something is produced with less chromosomes than its parents it has significant defects- I would think that Mules are a rare exception to this. The hybrid would have to have alterations on all 23 chromosome pairs- an alteration on one usually results in a severe disorder. I would guess that the offspring would be unable to develop or survive.
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Mules have a defect too. They can't be a parent. Usually they're sterile. The only way they can be a parent is through cloning.
There's aneuploid and euploid. Aneuploid refers to an imbalance in the number of chromosomes. Euploid refers to the number of sets of chromosomes an organism has. Like diploid tells you that the organism in question has two sets of chromosomes, often written as 2n with n being the haploid number of chromosomes in the set. I'm not quite sure, but as I can remember, I think when an organism is euploid, it's total number of chromosomes is an exact multiple of it's haploid number. So, I think mules would be diploid. I can't remember exactly how it works in humans, but I'm thinking in mules, during meiosis, chromosomes often come together in groups of 3, 5 or 6. As a result, mule gametes don't get a full compliment of chromosomes, which causes the defect.
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