Hello everyone, I guess this will be my new group for the rest of the semester. I found this weeks reading assignment rather interesting, it discussed several valuable ideas some I had poundered myself. The author details his idea that “natural selection does not care about the quality of our golden years” meaning that nature only cares about one's ability to reproduce and to raise offspring. As long as they are able to mature without any complications and bring in the next generation, you have successfully contributed to nature.
However, as you age and reach into your “golden years” your genetic code may be more susceptible to genetic diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease. This is due to nature selection not removing the deleterious mutations that affect a person later in their life. The article explains that a person who carries the ApoE4 genetic variant allele is much more likely to get the disease, and since it is a disease that only attacks a person in their “golden years” far out from their window to reproduce, the gene pool is filled with this mutation due to the lack of natural selection viewing this as a threat and not removing it from the gene pool. This allials for this genetic disease to continue to future generations. Do you believe that a disease like this can be stopped in the future with modern science? Possibly gene manipulation?
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This is known as the mutation-selection balance and allows the gene pool to stay at equilibrium, with this allows the gene pool to be 99.99% pure and contaminate free from most deleterious mutations. Furthermore, this is as close as perfect as the gene pool can get due to the randomness of mutations that can