A friend of mine just sent me this. I’ve had a look at snopes and could see nothing.
Sounds like a UL to me. Does anybody know anything about it?
I just heard on the radio that during WWII, a young woman in Frankfurt
was
caught in a bombing raid, and slightly injured. A few weeks later she
discovered she was pregnant, though a virgin. Eventually she delivered
a
healthy baby girl. The tests available at the time showed that there
was no
genetic or blood-type variant within the baby girl’s makeup. The
theory is
that the woman had been ovulating at the time she was injured, and the
trauma of the bombing had triggered cell division within the ovum,
thus
producing a virgin birth. Both the mother and child wished to remain
anonymous, and have done ever since.
I’m no biologist, but don’t sex cells like sperm and ovum only have half the genetic material of a somatic cell? Wouldn’t it then be impossible to have a child using just a single cell, trauma or not?
Turkeys can drown in a rainstorm, too. Humans aren’t that stu–
Nevermind.
Got a cite, re: turkeys? I don’t doubt you, just never heard this and would be interested to learn more.
Parthenogenesis is, of course, not unheard of–there’s a species of salamander in the U.S. that’s entirely made up of females–but what’s the “highest” (i.e., most complex) animal it happens in with any regularity? And how does such an animal get around the two-sets-of-chromosomes technicality?
In nonparthenogenic species, during meiosis, the amount of genetic material is halved, then the two halves in different gametes are brought together. To get parthenogenesis, you simply skip the halving step, or else have the DNA replicate once without cell division after the halving step.
I’m about 90% sure turkey’s don’t do it. I don’t think it occurs in anything higher than reptiles. But I may be wrong.
See the link above; according Cecil, 40% of domestic turkeys do it, or, um, don’t do it, depending on what “it” is. If you know what I mean and I think you do.
Cecil said in one of the columns that there was one documented case of parthogenesis in humans. Was that just a crack at the Virgin Mary, or was there no bullshit intended?
Problem with this whole concept: In mammals, sex cells only contain half of the genetic information required to make a person. That’s why you can’t clone someone from, say, a semen sample or an egg: Not enough information to get the full genome. All other nucleated cells, like mouth cells or white blood cells, have the full genome inside them. So the OP’s cite, as told, is purest BS. (The sex cell only has half of the required information because the other sex cell has half. Two halves=One whole genome for junior. In other words, the great genetic benefit of sex comes from the mixing of genes into new and more varied patterns. If a single sex cell could create a clone, what’s the point?)
Also, there’s a neat UL about a virgin, ca. 1860s, who got impregnated by a bullet that passed through the testicles of a Civil War soldier on its way to her abdomen.
Like tsarina, I thought Cecil’s mention of human parthenogenesis was a joke about Mary. Does anyone actually have a cite for alleged human parthenogenesis? I don’t believe it exists.
