The Randomness of Mutations in Sperm

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When we say a word like random, it doesn't mean a. There's no structure there at all. And so when you say that there are mutations in d and a that are random, how well do we understand the probability distribution of what's going to happen at every step in these kinds of processs? It's still a really active field. We don't know in any individual sperm or individual egg, where the mutations are going to be,. But there's going to be 20, in a human eggar sperm, there's gong to be 20 or 30 new mutations that weren't in mam or dad. A they're going to occur in spread throughout three billion base pairs

Evolution is a messy business, involving as it does selection pressures, mutations, genetic drift, and the effects of random external interventions. So in the end, how much of it is predictable, and how much is in the hands of chance? Today we’re thrilled to have as a guest my evil (but more respectable, by most measures) twin, the biologist Sean B. Carroll. Sean is both a leader of the modern evo-devo revolution, and a wonderful and diverse writer. We talk about the importance of randomness and unpredictability in life, from the evolution of species to the daily routine of every individual.

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Sean B. Carroll received a Ph.D. in immunology from Tufts University. He is currently the Andrew and Mary Balo and Nicholas and Susan Simon Endowed Chair of Biology at the University of Maryland, Vice-President for Science Education at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Executive Director of HHMI Tangled Bank Studios, and Professor Emeritus of Genetics and Molecular Biology at the University of Wisconsin. His new book, A Series of Fortunate Events: Chance and the Making of the Planet, Life, and You, explores the role of chance in the development of life.

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