Which of your parents do you believe is/was/might be/could have been autistic?

On thing I'm finding particularly interesting (and useful) in this thread is that people go back beyond their parents (or sideways) in thinking about genes.

I hadn't done this but now my mind is ticking over in all directions ....

Thanks.

In terms of inheritance, the genetic 'bag of tricks' is shaken up for every generation.

In terms of inheritance, the genetic 'bag of tricks' is shaken up for every generation.

Thank you Martin.

When sex cells are created each cell gets one chromosome derived from the two paired chromosomes of the parent. But this chromosome is a random mixture of the parental chromosomes, due to chiasma (crossing over of stretches of DNA between chromosomes) during meiosis. This is why non-identical twin siblings do not have the same traits. For example, take  my two children, one has brown eyes, the other blue eyes, though they have the same parents. This is due to them getting different mixtures of both my paired chromosomes and my wife's paired chromosomes. Chiasma is essentially a random process.

Traits skipping generations is fairly common. Eye colour is an easy example, though in fact the inheritance of eye colour is more complex than it might seem. Both my wife and I have brown eyes, but in both cases we have recessive blue-eye alleles, from both of our blue-eyed mothers. We have a blue-eyed child, blue eyes in my family skipped a generation.

Martin said:

In terms of inheritance, the genetic 'bag of tricks' is shaken up for every generation.

Is 'shaken up' diluted or is it just random?

Or something else?

Could I for example inherit something from a couple of generations back?