MovieChat Forums > Ascension (2014) Discussion > genetic pool?

genetic pool?

posted 9 years ago by elasalle
7 replies | jump to latest

Does the concept of the generation ship have a problem? In order for the human race to breed effectively dont you need a larger pools of genes..So 1 generation ship going to a distant star would eventually land, but the colony would eventually interbreed some odd things soemwhere down the line.

Has this ever been addresed. thoughts?

As well check this out the numbers are too low

http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/deep-space/a10369/how-many-people-does-it-take-to-colonize-another-star-system-16654747/

[–] kerryedavis 9 years ago

If it were a REAL mission it would be too small. But they were TRYING to interbreed in order to bring out a certain trait.

[–] venanttout 8 years ago

If it were a REAL mission it would be too small. But they were TRYING to interbreed in order to bring out a certain trait.

Exactly.

[–] evelhussey 9 years ago

The short answer is yes. A generation ship would end up being a new branch of the species. It might have undesirable traits from inbreeding, but who's to say we don't already?

[–] naum-rusomarov-944-460795 8 years ago

"With 10,000," Smith says, "you can set off with good amount of human genetic diversity, survive even a bad disease sweep, and arrive in numbers, perhaps, and diversity sufficient to make a good go at Humanity 2.0."

If you're willing to take the risk and artificially control the population for diversity and unwelcome genetic traits you could possibly reduce the 10k number even further. But I don't know if that's going to be enough even with highly advanced genetic screening and gene correction methods, some of which are starting to be used today.

p.s. The main goal of the generation ship wasn't the creation of humanity 2.0 but the creation of an individual with some very specific traits, so the long term (>100 years) genetic quality of the population was not of concern to the creators of the project.

[–] Volley2020 8 years ago

Seeing as how Adam & Eve and all their children had to mess around with each other at various times throughout their 800 to 1000 years of life, pre-Flood, human civilization, from the gene pool perspective, actually turned out pretty good, didn't it?

[–] puzzle_queen 8 years ago

Adam and Eve, seriously? You do know that it's a creation myth, right?

[–] triplegrim 8 years ago

They only have to go 2 generations before they get to their destination. Assuming 4 out of 5 women agree (and are able) to have 6 children, by different fathers, you are going to have about 1500 children for the next generation, most of whom will not be related. From this you will get 4500 People in the second generation born on the planet, and 13000+ for the Third generation.

But that is very theoretical, a more likely scenario is that the women have 8 children each With the same man, all of whom have 8+ children themself again. At which point few People on the planet will be related still actually, since most of them have not interbred. Especially if 1 clan is likely to marry another clan etc.

Most tribes such as jews and Arabs, or smaller villages around the world, comes from a few dozen families originally. As long as you dont marry Brother and sister, and keep cousins to a minimum, you will be in the Clear. You have a lot of genes that dont manifest every generation, so if the People selected in general had few Genetic problems in their Family, and they monitored who was "allowed" to have children With whom, they should be in the Clear With 600 People.