Hey Genetics and math obsessed aspies over here! Challenge!

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I found this question on the internet, i forgot where though. This is a TOUGH question involving intense genetics understand and a good set of math skills.

So crunch away geniuses! Yes even if you are of average intelligence and help figure this out, you are smart enough to be qualified for semi-genius LOL.

This I can work out but theres a mistake in the question!

You're missing 3 neurotypicals who arent assigned genders

Lemme know the other three and I'll crack it for you!

Thanks

Craig

+1 female and +2 males

One huge problem.

Can we assume that all of the aspies in the first generation are each homozygotic, or whatever the term is ( have both genes as capital A)?

All you have given us is their phenotype, but not their genotypes.

Last edited by naturalplastic on 11 Aug 2012, 8:46 am, edited 2 times in total.

I believe the term you're looking for is homo- or heterozygous (based on the way the information is presented, I think it is intended that every first generation is heterozygous, but you are right that it is important to know this before attempting to figure any of it out).
If a human were not diploid, there are some other, rather more important, genetic problems to be worked out on this island.
Are we to assume Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium laws? Random mating and all that? Difficult in a small population sample. Statistics present the ideal, but there is, for example, the freak possibility that no offspring inherits A, given that even an Aa x Aa has a 1/4 chance of producing a homozygous recessive. So there's 15 (5 men x 3 women) possible Aa x Aa crossings, which means if each crossing produces one child, there is a 1/4^15 chance that none of them will have the dominant trait, and there are 55 (5 men x 8 NT females, 3 females x 5 NT males) Aa x aa crossings possible, each with a 1/2 chance of producing a homozygous recessive, so that's 1/2^55, you can work that out. And that's after only 1 generation. (Feel free to correct any math mistakes I've made, I'm doing this in my head and I'm a bio person, not a math person).
Of course that's just wildly hypothetical and probably not at all the spirit of the question.

I guess if you were born "haploid" then asperger's would be the LEAST of your problems!

Lol!


I was geeky enough to try to solve this.

I made the assumption that all of the aspie individuals were purebred aspies - homozygots.

Put the ten men on one axis and the 8 women on the other.

If each man hooked up with just woman, and vice versa, and produced one child.... well the upshot is... that out of every 80 births in this community-in the first generation-15 would be homozygot aspies, 40 would be heterozygots (mixed genetically- but would exhibit asperger's), and 25 would be purebred neurotypicals. By percentage-that would be 18.75, 50, and 31.25. Almost 70 percent would be aspie by phenotype ( would exhibit the condition in life even though they have only one gene for it).

Assuming an even number of boy and girl kids you could then try to figure out what happens in the next generation.

But( back to the beginning) if you assume some, or all the original aspie founders were hetereozygotic , rather than the homozygotic conditiong that I am assuming, then you would get different figures.

Actually I think what would happen is that after a few generations most of the population would be aspie in phenotype, with a minority of nt's. It would settle into a stable pattern. Niether group would dissappear, but the condtion caused by the dominant gene would be the majority.

If you postulate some reproductive advantage, or disadvantage to one condition or the other, and assign a number to it, then it would get interesting.

What im trying to figure out is in how many generations will the entire population of the island will possess the asperger's trait or at least carry it as for it being a dominant trait.

Now for the Child gender ratio, im sorry about that, i totally had forgotten about that.

We don't know how often NTs and Aspies will mate? NTs, and NTs are more likely to mate, with each-other?

Sorry if it's already been said, how often they will, I'm dyslexic, and not good at reading .

yeah, and you never said how many kids each couple would have, or how many times everyone mates. So many variables!

Now, maybe, while the neurotypicals hung out at parties and drank coconut milk, the aspies would get really obsessive over trying to make technology. Soon, the aspies would have a nice little forge, and weapons, and the neurotypicals wouldn't care, and some rabid island wolf would come and kill all the NTs. So, it's possible that in one generation everyone would be aspies.

everyone knows that aspies never get laid. we'd die out in one generation, for sure.

you might be right, but don't be such a pessimist! This is a thought experiment, so we can do whatever we want. Maybe on the island there are man-eating venus flytraps that kill everyone. So there wouldn't be any neurotypicals either.

Ahhhh unquantifiable parameters! *head implodes*

Maybe a hurricane hits, and no one knows how to build shelter that will withstand it, except for one aspie who is obsessed with architectural engineering. Of course, he doesn't tell anyone, or even realize that a storm is coming; he just happens to be inside his structurally sound habitat at the moment. Six months later he's out gathering berries when he thinks "wait, weren't there some people here?"

yeah, that's the right idea. And maybe another aspie who was obsessed with bats found a cave with bats and happened to be in there, deep underground, when the hurricane struck.

Use a simpler and less emotionally charged example to do the figuring. And then apply the lesson to humans and how they are neurologically wired.

Take an island.
Plant a garden of 20 petunias on it.

Half are red, half are blue.

There is random mating through pollination.

Lessay the colors are co-dominant. The hybrids are purple.

Then start calculationg.

In the next generation- one fourth of the flowers are red, a fourth blue, and half will be purple.

No need to even worry about the total numbers of the population.

Then repeat.

Then repeat again.

I think youll find that there will always be a few reds and a few blues even thought the vast majority will be purples even after many generations.

Then take your conclusion and fill in the blanks: say red equals NT, say blue equals homozygote aspies, and purple equals people with both kinds of genes but whom would be phenotypically because the gene for aspieness is dominant ( according to you).

i like that approach. however, if you were a petunia, you would have to pick a less emotionally charged example for the basic calculations.

Im sure petunias would be shocked if they knew that I was promoting misgenation between their races (even if it is only in a hypothetical)!