Apparently, we’re not allowed to mutate at all; so conclude a geneticist, philosopher and a chicken farmer, because (and I quote):
“Put simply, the reason is down to the fact that genetic material does not change during an animal’s life.
Therefore the first bird that evolved into what we would call a chicken, probably in prehistoric times, must have first existed as an embryo inside an egg.”
OK, now I’m confused!
If the non-chicken is forbidden to mutate — specifically, is not to mutate its genetic material — then how did (s)he arrange to spawn a chicken?
Magic? Act of willpower (er... hey... — come on — this is a chicken we’re discussing here, not Howard the Duck)? A spare “Get Into Chickenhood Free” card? Umpire looks the other way?
After all of the to- and fro-ing which has happened over the years, I’d like to see an answer with a real reason behind it.
Comments
Mutations occur because DNA replication, like anything else, is a flawed process. It's pretty good - there's about twelve nines after the ninety-nine point - but when consider the thousands of cell divisions that occur every day in your body, you can see that the sample space gets very big over time.
So mutations happen in your body. What leads geneticists to say that "genetic material does not change during an animal's life"?
Once you get past the single cell stage, there is no way to spread changes in the genetic material to every single cell in the body (well, ignoring retroviruses and viral oncogenes), and attempting to do so could lead to immune rejection - which will also kill off some mutated cells.
However, in sperm/egg production, mutations are spread to every single cell produced from that sperm/egg (assuming it is not a defective mutation) - we call these resultant cells offspring.
(There is actually a higher chance of the offspring receiving mutated parental DNA - it has two parents, after all. The dichromosomal interactions make it a lot more confusing, too.)
Of course, as the linked article shows, the question is largely one of semantics and not biology.
The semantics essentially define permissible biological techniques, so yes, the big issue is in the reportage rather than any experiment.
While you may think of your post as idiocy, there's a big universal lesson hiding here: to so very many people, it isn't. Your post is the only way that some people will ever get to think it all through... well, relatively all, to at least get them moving down the runway.
A sad sub-secret is that some of the real, official experts opinionating (not just in the article) really have no idea that there might be a genuine alternative way or ways of considering their data. Even if they disagree with what you said, your words may help some of them to finally get mentally airborne.