Sorry for the terrible pun, but l’m legit curious.
A friend and I were talking about how some sourdough mothers, pho broths, etc can literally be human generations old. Is it a “Ship of Theseus” kind of thing? Does the process of maintaining the mother prevent this by adding in new yeast? Do the many generations of yeast make different strains of yeast? Is there a concern that the many yeast generations could create undesirable modifications?
In: Biology
Yeah, it’s absolutely possible. You can ask “Why is inbreeding actually bad?”… and it turns out there’s a good answer. It’s bad because it substantially increases the probability of natural errors in your genome getting expressed, thereby creating a child that will have a miserable life. Increased expected suffering of both the child and the care-takers, that’s why it’s bad.
So can that happen to yeast? You bet! One yeast cell could absolutely split into a partially defective yeast cell. It’s just that yeast doesn’t really do the whole “compassion” thing. The weak ones die. The strong ones split in half and eventually die. Yeast doesn’t care what comes out of it
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