HealthScapades #14 | Independent Assortment na Bastid | 26.09.2024
by Tayo Fasuan
The first time I would see the dad of one of my best friends, Owen Kay, it was completely serendipitous. I was walking with Abbey, another mutual best friend of ours, around the premises of our faculty in the university, when I looked up and saw a man walking exactly like Owen.
I momentarily froze. One, there was no way the walk pattern of any man could be exactly like Owen’s. And two, there was no way a close relative of Owen could resemble him in that way. I was wrong on both counts when I pointed the man out to Abbey. He said that was Owen’s dad.
Although I have seen many types of resemblance over the years that blow my mind, I still marvel at the wonders of genetic heritage. The area that amazes me the most is how a child picks different genes from the parents and displays the physical and other attributes of both strikingly.
Take me, for instance. Many people believe I look like my dad, but what they see is the complexion and mannerisms that I inherited from him. Facially, I look like my mum. Also, Dad has soft hair, small feet, and calmness. But I took my mum’s unyielding hair, bigger feet and overly friendly manner.
Funniest of all these are those who inherited genes from their grandparents and even great-grandparents. The genes they inherited may be recessive and unexpressed in their parents but become inexplicably dominant and even annoyingly evident in them.
This inheritance also means that we can also inherit diseases, especially genetically linked ones such as cancer, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, obesity, sickle cell, haemophilia and many others.
And how did one get so lucky, or even unlucky, as to inherit any of these? Independent assortment of genes. When the genes from your mother and father are mixed after fertilisation, you just randomly and independently pick genes that are either bad or good.
That’s why whenever I encounter genetic diseases or any other unfavourable genetic inheritance these days, I end up cussing out independent assortment with a frown on my face. Na the real bastid!