Dragon Genetics

[Ghost of Fire (Fëanáro)]

So, I was thinking about how dragons can inbreed and all without problems (like Mnementh was Ramoth's half-brother, and all) and it occurred to me that maybe dragons were haplo-diplo, like bees. That is, one sex is haploid and the other is diploid.

This would prevent the accumulation of deleterious recessive alleles (which is why inbreeding is bad), since the haploid sex would not be able to function as well if it possessed those alleles and thus would not get chances to mate.

[Nicole]

I understood about two words of that.





That's a lie, I actually understood all of that, even if I couldn't have figured it out myself. I like that idea. I just flipped through the sections on genetics and mating in The Dragonlover's Guide to Pern and it doesn't mention anything about how that would work, so it's more than possible that that was in the original genetic code that wasn't messed with...

[Ghost of Fire (Fëanáro)]

Of course it might also have to do with the fact that dragon DNA is a triple helix. Which of course, would allow a whole lot of mutations to occur very rapidly, because there the base-pairing wouldn't be able to take place (unless they just use completely different bases etc.). Also, it would probably be harder to super coil a triple helix, so I have no idea how that would fit into a cell without problems, and well...

Let's just wave our hands and say triple-helix DNA.

[Void]

*waves hands* Triple-Helix all the way!

[Kaya]

'Cause someone had to one-up the double helix. xP

[Cait]

I see your triple helix and come at you with a quadruple helix. Come at me bro!

That's what the kids say nowadays, isn't it?

[Kaya]

At least a quadruple helix could have base pairs...