Research Paper On Thelma

An 11-year old reticulated python named Thelma, housed at the Louisville Zoo in Kentucky, gave birth to six healthy baby snakes without a male partner. This is the first time a virgin birth has been documented in Thelma’s species, known as Malayopython reticulatus, which holds the world record for “longest snake ever” in captivity. It is not uncommon for a snake to lay infertile eggs, so after the zoo staff inspected the eggs, they were surprised when the eggs appeared to be healthy and full, instead of shrunken and discolored. On September 12th, 2012, the first of the six reticulated python babies hatched, and scientists at the University of Tulsa, who used genetic testing and molecular analyzing, were even more surprised to learn that all

Researchers have questioned why this is possible as sperm and egg cells are needed in order a create the full set of chromosomes, but with only the egg cells, an organism should only contain half the number of chromosomes. Researches have surprisingly found that the female whiptails are different in the aspect that they get their full set of chromosomes by starting off with twice as many. Aracely Lutes from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research showed that all female whiptails double their chromosomes twice before everything kicks off, creating eight copies of each. Lutes then measured the amount of DNA in the egg cells and found that the chromoseoms of the asecual checkered whiptail (A. tesselatus) take up twice as much room as those of the sexual Texan spotted whiptail (A. gularis) even though both species have similarly sized genomes. Having eight sets of chromosomes rather than four is definitely different, however it doesn’t take much for this to occur. The cell could either go through two different processes. One process is when the cell duplicates, but its DNA but fails to actually split into two, and the other process is where two cells end up fusing together. The outcome of either of these two processes is the act of creating baby lizards asexually without the problems of having a male to mate with. Therefore,