alright, now i can type my post comfortably. i couldnt even tell the story of mitochondrion dna last nite cox the irritating security guard was stamping and shaking her bundle of keys - a signal to us to vacate the room as it was ald ten. ok, sorry for calling her irritating, it wasnt her fault anyway. she was merely executing her job.
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the truth of our origins lie in us. as every bio student (and even non-bio student) knows that we come from the fusion of two cells - this is the very first bit of us. these cells are the ovum from your mom and the sperm from your dad. and then mrs wong can tell you all sort of things that happen after fertilization and bla bla bla. i'm not interested in regurgitating the bio textbook. but when it comes to inheritance, this is the interesting part. the bio books say that we inherit one allele each from our parents, specifically during the process of meiosis, where two alleles are separated and only one goes into forming the gamete. aiya itz a random process. anyway this is not the main point. i'm just revising my heridity.
BUT listen up. we only inherit our MOTHER'S mitochondria, and not the two-gametes-fuse-and-their-genetic-components-merge kind of talk. this is not the case for our mitochondria. the very first mitochondrion in us comes form, and only, from our mother. this is the story:
the ovum is released from the ovary. it is just like any cell in the body, just that it has haploid number of chromosomes (i've explained why just now). then here comes a 'sea' of sperms, all vying to be the one to fertilize the ovum (i mean without contraception). mitochondria is to provide energy for our cells. so in sperms, their tails are the parts that need most energy. and therefore, the mitochondria from our daddy are found in this region. then look. once one sperm manages to penetrate the cell surface membrane of the ovum, itz tail is detached from itz head. and dadda!!! your daddy's mitochondria dont enter with the cell nucleus, and hence, you inherit your mom's mitochondria.
i guess by tracing back the dna of our mitochondria, we may be able to find the first mom. could it be Eve, as the bible claims to be? i wouldnt know, unless the human genome is completely mapped and decoded like the rat's before i die. itz possible, but it takes time. i certainly wouldnt have the time for this. the human genome project will take generations before it can succeed. maybe in my next life, that i'll be the one revealing the human genome.
maybe.
