Talk:Jeremy (snail)

Hooks

... that Jeremy the left-coiled snail died this month after fathering 56 right-coiled offspring? (Source https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/12/science/jeremy-lefty-snail.html)

... that ...that research on the genes of Jeremy the rare left-coiled snail could help scientists understand diseases like Situs inversus? (Source https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/12/science/jeremy-lefty-snail.html)

Dysklyver 22:40, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

DYK

This is the most ridiculous article I've seen on Wikipedia, and it's featured on the homepage.

+1, its great isn't it. Though there is a serious science based undertone to the article involving genetic research if you look closely. Dysklyver 15:08, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Photo?

This article needs a photo of its subject! --Piledhigheranddeeper (talk) 02:00, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

None are available with a usable license, and being a very rare mutation, we cant just use a picture of any snail. Dysklyver 15:06, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Recessive gene

Looking at this paragraph:

It is believed that the genetic mutation might reappear in a later generation due to a recessive gene.[15][16] In snails, a shell-coiling trait may reappear later in another generation, even if a previous generation appears normal, because the gene which causes the mutation is hereditary.[17][18]

The first sentence says that it is a recessive gene. If the reader clicks on the link to the recessive gene article it explains how the phenotype could reappear in a later generation. The second sentence doesn't make much sense to me - to say the gene is hereditary is surely redundant, as all genes are hereditary.

Yes, the last sentence is doubly senseless because not only are all genes hereditary anyway, but also no gene is causing a mutation. I could read page 707 of reference [18] and I mean the best explanation is the sentence I cited. 194.174.73.80 (talk) 14:33, 27 October 2017 (UTC) Marco Pagliero Berlin

The whole point of that section (as I wrote it), is that the gene is supposed to be both hereditary and recessive, like in humans suffering from organ inversion, and the study of these genes and the extent to which they are hereditary is why the research is important. Particularly when looking at diseases, genes are often needlessly referred to as hereditary as a matter of style. I think to say all genes are hereditary is probably an oversimplification, but essentially correct. As the entire point of the paragraph is to explain that this is an area of research, I think it should be noted that it is important to state the hereditary nature of said gene. Dysklyver 15:05, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Fine fine fine, so you reverted my edit. As you please, but still your version is meaningless poor English because the point with the snail is not that the gene involved to be hereditary, second no gene causes a mutation and third your sentence misses completely the point of the F3 generation showing a phenotype which was masked in F2.

By now I have some doubts about your competence in biology or maybe you have just difficulties with verbal expression as your very special usage of "gene", "mutation" and "hereditary" suggests (maybe are you confusing "hereditary" and "homozygous"?) but I'm not going to war with you about it. Here my phrasing you just reverted: "In snails, a shell-coiling trait may reappear later in another generation, even if a previous generation appears normal, because the coiling phenotype of an individual snail is determined by the genotype of its mother" and let the others choose 194.174.73.80 (talk) 15:58, 27 October 2017 (UTC) Marco Pagliero Berlin

PS: Here a good explanation of the matter: http://www.biologydiscussion.com/genetics/cytoplasmic-inheritance/inheritance-of-shell-coiling-in-snail-with-diagram/37190 and here my summary: the children's coiling depends only on the genotype of the mother and not on theirs own because the coiling in the embryo is determined by the orientation of the spindle at the time of the first divisions of the egg. So all children of an homozygously left-coiled mother will be left-coiled but she can still be right-coiled if her mother was not homozygously left-coiled.

All this has possibly nothing to do with your pet topic "genetic malformations" (and by the way: where in the sources did you find "situs inversus" to be a disease?