Telomeres

I think this is a matter of debate, but it is also possible that those infamous telomeres are there to protect you from your own cells - that is, they prevent cells to uncontrollably divide and become cancerous in case they lose some other control growth mechanisms. ...

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... chromosomes joining to become a single one which in turn causes enough of a change in behavior and morphology a new species is produced. First the telomeres at each end of the 2 supercoiled chromosomes that fused became sticky by removal of the repeating code that forms a protective layer that ...

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... to hold them together during metaphase. It would have to be an intricate orchestrated process that would unfold into a viable offspring. (Though telomeres do have unique proteins that do like to bind together, especially Sir2, in yeast models so far.)

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... the right idea with balanced and unbalanced. What I am most wondering is whether during meiosis a fully balanced fusion that only involves the telomeres could even result in unbalanced germ cells. It would seem that the chromosomes would still properly align along the mid-line with the fused ...

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... in this scenario the chromosome would break. Fortunately for us one of the centromeres is no longer functional, and this doesn't happen. The telomeres are still there and you can detect the sequence, but that's no problem - it's just repetitive DNA, like we have much of.

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