Mating Between Species

Representative Trantis said:

I'm not a pervet!, this is a genuine question about genetic relatedness......

What would it take to mate humans and chimps to produce a healthy offspring?

They are 99% related. Given that, would it be possible for them to mate, and what would be the
likely result?

(What effect would that one percent have?)

This was once before a thread in SBE and the consensus was it would not be possible. One difficulty
but not the only difficulty is that humans and chimps have different chromosome number. Understand
that having a different number of chromosomes is not always a barrier by itself. Donkeys have 62
chromosomes, common horse has 64 and Przewalski's horse has 66. Donkey and horse produce healthy
but infertile "mules". A Przewalski and common horse will produce fertile offspring. William L Hunt

in article [email hidden], Representative Trantis at
[email hidden] wrote on 9/27/03 2:27 PM:

Quoted message said:

I'm not a pervet!, this is a genuine question about genetic relatedness......

What would it take to mate humans and chimps to produce a healthy offspring?

They are 99% related. Given that, would it be possible for them to mate, and what would be the
likely result?

(What effect would that one percent have?)

It is impossible at this point to predict with confidence the outcome of interspecies hybridization
between closely related species without trying

general, including crosses between conspecifics.

Guy

Guy Hoelzer said:

in article [email hidden], Representative Trantis at [email hidden] wrote on 9/27/03
2:27 PM:

Quoted message said:

I'm not a pervet!, this is a genuine question about genetic relatedness......

What would it take to mate humans and chimps to produce a healthy offspring?

They are 99% related. Given that, would it be possible for them to mate, and what would be the
likely result?

(What effect would that one percent have?)

It is impossible at this point to predict with confidence the outcome of interspecies
hybridization between closely related species without trying

Quoted message said:

general, including crosses between conspecifics.

Guy

The chromosome numbers shouldn't matter. We have humans walking around with different numbers of
chromosomes. They will matter in the fertility of the hybrid.

My guess is that development will be a problem. Chimps are born smaller but more physically capable
and humans are born larger and less physically capable, and there is a big difference in brain size
at birth. I don't know how the two patterns would blend to get a viable hybrid. This isn't like the
horse and donkey developmental patterns that are essentially the same.

Horses and donkeys are more divergent for the genes that you can find in the database than are
chimps and humans. Cyt c, hemoglobin and some globin pseudo genes are all a little more divergent in
horses and donkeys than the genes or pseudo genes in humans and chimps. The odd thing is that horse
and donkey mitochondrial DNA sequences are more similar. This could point to a horizontal transfer
of mitochondria in the equid lineage.

Ron Okimoto

William L Hunt <[email hidden]> wrote or quoted:

Quoted message said:

"Representative Trantis" <[email hidden]> wrote:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

What would it take to mate humans and chimps to produce a healthy offspring?

They are 99% related. Given that, would it be possible for them to mate, and what would be the
likely result?

(What effect would that one percent have?)

This was once before a thread in SBE and the consensus was it would not be possible.

Genetic engineering will eventually result in it becoming possible to combine elements of
practically any two species and produca e viable result, with characters from both species.

As such it is likely to blur - or eliminate - "species" as a natural kind.

Without such interventions, though, the consensus is that humans and chimps are indeed separate
species - and unions can be expected to produce no offspring.

There have historically been some candidate hybryds (e.g. see:
legioneuropa.orgspecies2.htmOpen ↗ )...but apparently, none have panned out.
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On Thu, 2 Oct 2003 18:42:07 +0000 (UTC), Tim Tyler <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

William L Hunt <[email hidden]> wrote or quoted:

Quoted message said:

"Representative Trantis" <[email hidden]> wrote:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

What would it take to mate humans and chimps to produce a healthy offspring?

They are 99% related. Given that, would it be possible for them to mate, and what would be the
likely result?

(What effect would that one percent have?)

This was once before a thread in SBE and the consensus was it would not be possible.

Genetic engineering will eventually result in it becoming possible to combine elements of
practically any two species and produca e viable result, with characters from both species.

As such it is likely to blur - or eliminate - "species" as a natural kind.

Without such interventions, though, the consensus is that humans and chimps are indeed separate
species - and unions can be expected to produce no offspring.

There have historically been some candidate hybryds (e.g. see:
legioneuropa.orgspecies2.htmOpen ↗ )...but apparently, none have panned out.

Given that hybridization and lateral gene transfer have been occuring for a few billion years, now,
and given that there are probably something on the order of ten million species around, it is
unlikely that genetic engineering on one or two is ever likely to blur anything. It will make a
difference in a very tiny handful of cases (a few agricultural hybrids may dominate), but the notion
of "species" will remain.

r norman <rsn_@_comcast.net> wrote or quoted:

Quoted message said:

Tim Tyler <[email hidden]> wrote:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Genetic engineering will eventually result in it becoming possible to combine elements of
practically any two species and produca e viable result, with characters from both species.

As such it is likely to blur - or eliminate - "species" as a natural kind.

Quoted message said:

Given that hybridization and lateral gene transfer have been occuring for a few billion years,
now, and given that there are probably something on the order of ten million species around, it is
unlikely that genetic engineering on one or two is ever likely to blur anything.

Of course not. However engineering will come to penetrate *everywhere*, affecting *all*
living systems.

My essay at alife.co.ukengineered futureOpen ↗ explains why I think "natural" species won't
stand a chance against more sophisticated competition.

Quoted message said:

It will make a difference in a very tiny handful of cases (a few agricultural hybrids may
dominate), but the notion of "species" will remain.

I think we may differ because of a difference in the time scales under consideration.

I see no reason to think why only a "tiny handful" of cases will be affected by the changes. We are
in a symbiotic relationship with the biosphere - not just "a few agricultural hybrids".

Also, note that those organisms with close symiotic relationships with us are doing rather well at
the moment - successfully displacing innumerable rain forest species from the planet.

Whatever the number of species currently on the planet, the figure is a rapidly falling one.
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