I think what you mean is that each chromosome has two paired arms that contain alternate versions of functionally the same content. It’s like if you had two cookbooks by different authors that had the same chapters and dishes, but different content. The two versions aren’t in the two strands of DNA, they’re in the two arms of each chromosome.
The problem is that during reproduction, each parent randomly contributes one of the two chromosome halves. When each sperm and each egg is made, there’s a 50-50 chance that it gets arm 1 or arm 2 from each chromosome.
If you were to engage in this exercise (which is tagged “selfcest” if you’re looking for erotic stories about this stuff), you’d encounter the same problem with incestual reproduction: unless the sperm and egg were prepared in a lab or using magic to ensure that each arm of each chromosome went into a different sex cell, you’d inevitably have cases where the sperm and egg both received their chromosome from the same arm.
You have genes from your mom and your dad. But in some regions of this offspring’s genome they’d receive two copies of genes from your mom and no copy of your dad’s, or vice-versa. And we rely on having two different copies as backups. This is why interbreeding produces birth defects and lower fitness: either parent can have a handful of bad genes, but if the other one has a good copy it’s often no biggie. But if you get two copies of the bad ones and no good copy (which is more likely if you marry your cousin or boink your clone) then you have problems.
To summarize, you wouldn’t faithfully duplicate yourself, you’d duplicate most of yourself.
So – assuming the offspring was viable – you’d kind of get a lower quality clone: the offspring would probably look almost like a twin of the original, but they might have worse eyesight. They might be stockier or lankier. They might have thin, anemic blood. They might have oilier skin and hair, or dryer, itchier skin and hair.
I think this is mostly correct.
I think what you mean is that each chromosome has two paired arms that contain alternate versions of functionally the same content. It’s like if you had two cookbooks by different authors that had the same chapters and dishes, but different content. The two versions aren’t in the two strands of DNA, they’re in the two arms of each chromosome.
The problem is that during reproduction, each parent randomly contributes one of the two chromosome halves. When each sperm and each egg is made, there’s a 50-50 chance that it gets arm 1 or arm 2 from each chromosome.
If you were to engage in this exercise (which is tagged “selfcest” if you’re looking for erotic stories about this stuff), you’d encounter the same problem with incestual reproduction: unless the sperm and egg were prepared in a lab or using magic to ensure that each arm of each chromosome went into a different sex cell, you’d inevitably have cases where the sperm and egg both received their chromosome from the same arm.
You have genes from your mom and your dad. But in some regions of this offspring’s genome they’d receive two copies of genes from your mom and no copy of your dad’s, or vice-versa. And we rely on having two different copies as backups. This is why interbreeding produces birth defects and lower fitness: either parent can have a handful of bad genes, but if the other one has a good copy it’s often no biggie. But if you get two copies of the bad ones and no good copy (which is more likely if you marry your cousin or boink your clone) then you have problems.
To summarize, you wouldn’t faithfully duplicate yourself, you’d duplicate most of yourself.
So – assuming the offspring was viable – you’d kind of get a lower quality clone: the offspring would probably look almost like a twin of the original, but they might have worse eyesight. They might be stockier or lankier. They might have thin, anemic blood. They might have oilier skin and hair, or dryer, itchier skin and hair.
“I like pizza, Steve!”
I hope there are others out there that still recognize and use this movie quote 30 years later.