Bayblab podcast: Episode20

A new season of the bayblab podcast is back (rss, mp3). As usual we drunkenly ramble about the cancer carnival and specualte on how dogs can smell cancer, we talk about the different classes of substances abused in sports and why it is unethical, we talk about personal genetic information, privacy and companies like 23 and me, and finally we display our ignorance by tackling basic science questions....

Biblical genetics

Before Mendel came along, there were various explanations about inheritance of traits by sexual reproduction. Here is how the hide pattern in goats is inherited in Genesis 30:37-39

30:37 And Jacob took him rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chesnut tree; and pilled white strakes in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods.
30:38 And he set the rods which he had pilled before the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs when the flocks came to drink, that they should conceive when they came to drink.
30:39 And the flocks conceived before the rods, and brought forth cattle ringstraked, speckled, and spotted.

So you're warned: simply looking at striped patterns during sex gives your offspring with stripes.