Eli5: Would any of the 250 million sperm I outraced into existence, have been, in any meaningful way different different than I turned out?

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We often hear the metaphor, “out of the millions of sperm, you won the race!” Or something along those lines. But since the sperm are caring copies of the same genetic material, wouldn’t any of them have turned out to be me?

(Excluding abiotic factors, of course)

In: Biology

14 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

They don’t carry the same genetic material! Each of them contains half of your fathers DNA, but randomly selected basically.

You have 2 copies of each gene, one from your father and one from your mother. Among the genes from your father it’s random wether you have one from your grandfather or grandmother, and each sperm is different in that selection basically.

If that wasn’t the case then all siblings would have identical DNA, but they differ in wich genes of the parents get selected and sich get dropped.

Simple bloodtype example. If your father has AB then half of the sperms will carry A and half will carry B, and whatever you get is combined with the randomly selected gene of the mother 

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