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KevinLA
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15 Jun 2012, 4:51 pm

If a different sperm reached my mother's egg, would I be here?



Sparx
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15 Jun 2012, 6:26 pm

I believe so. Sperm and eggs are not people, they are cells.



CockneyRebel
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15 Jun 2012, 8:29 pm

I think you would.


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naturalplastic
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16 Jun 2012, 5:33 pm

KevinLA wrote:
If a different sperm reached my mother's egg, would I be here?

No. You wouldnt be here. But you're unconcieved sibling would be here in your place.

A child wouldve been born, but with a different set of genes-similar - but not identical
to you.



LocustMoon
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16 Jun 2012, 5:52 pm

From the wording of the original question I would say the genetic relationship would be between that of a full sibling and an identical twin: With an identical egg and different sperm the average expected genetic relationship would be 75% identical.

I really doubt that this was the direction the original poster meant for the discussion to go, however.


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VIDEODROME
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16 Jun 2012, 6:40 pm

It depends. The Egg was bombarded by sperm. It could have been any of them, but I think they had basically the same DNA right? So it seems like you could have still been the result.



LocustMoon
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16 Jun 2012, 6:48 pm

Going on the essentially right statement that each human has two of each chromosome, one from each parent, the genetic similarity between two sperm from the same person is 50% by random assortment.

This estimate can be skewed by several factors, including homozygous DNA, recombination, mutation, and epigenetics, but by the most basic assumptions it's 50%.


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