Can someone explain? I’m at a loss here
I’m lost here.
I’m never gonna escape loss.
I’m afraid you’re missing a chromosome, a tragic loss I’m afraid.
(Assuming those are, anyway. What happens if you’re born without one?)
Yes. These are micrographs of chromosomes. Humans, along with nearly all complex animals, are diploid, meaning that our chromosomes occur in matched pairs (one from each parent). Humans should generally have 23 chromosome pairs. Having more or fewer than 46 total chromosomes is called aneuploidy.
Aneuploidy can occur in two main variants: monosomy (having only half of a chromosome pair) and polysomy (having three or more copies of a chromosome, instead of two). Because of how gene expression works, aneuploidy will fuck you up pretty bad. Basically, our bodies and the systems that make them up need a pretty strict balance of protein manufacture, which requires two copies (there are other factors like gene inactivation, etc but, they’re unnecessary for this).
This is so delicate that all monosomies in humans are fatal, except for and monsomy X/Y. All viable babies with monosomy X/Y are female and affected by Turner syndrome which causes significant physiological problems including heart and reproductive system abnormalities (sorry guys, our Y, by itself is incompatible with life). There are also 3 partial monosomies that are survivable: Cri du Chat (partial deletion of chromosome 5; causes physical and mental disabilities), 1p36 deletion syndrome (partial deletion of chromosome 1; causes physical and mental disabilities as well as seizures and/or epilepsy in ~50%), 17q12 microdeletion syndrome (deletion of HNF1B gene on chromosome 17; causes physical and mental disabilities as well as type 5 diabetes).
Polysomy is a bit more forgiving but still pretty rough. Polysomies of X and Y are common, relative to other polysomies, and generally result in physical and mental abnormalities. Polysomy 7 is linked with squamous cell carcinoma (cancer). Trisomy (three copies) 8 is linked with acute myeloid leukemia with tetrasomy and hexasomy 8 being linked with more severe disease. Trisomy 21 causes Down syndrome.
TL;DR: in the image, their Loss appears to be either a partial monosomy of chromosome 4 and possibly absence of chromosomes 5-X/Y. They’re pretty much boned.
I remembered it vaguely from high school so I knew it was bad, just not the specifics! And yeah, maybe that’s the real story of loss: they had partial monosomy, resulting in cancer (or whatever the OG meme comic was ultimately about, haha)
I played with squishy things (biochem, microbiology) back in uni. I always enjoy getting a chance to dust off that knowledge. I think that the original comic was about a miscarriage/failed pregnancy.
A miscarriage… caused by missing chromosomes! See, it all makes sense now. ;)
Thanks fossilossque.
48 hours later it hit me… I should have said:
Thanks lossilesque
Much better. I’m surprised nobody else called me on this.
Is this apoptosis?
2010 wants its memes back
I hate you
Eli5?
I appreciate that and also don’t understand why the first one would be a popular comic. Who is that for? The minimalist line one is cool though.
This is loss
A comic artist created a poignant depiction of his wife’s miscarriage. It became a meme. Every time I see a reference to it, I imagine his pain.
While I will agree that a miscarriage is tragedy and I feel for his wife, Tom Broccoli doesn’t deserve your sympathy, friend.
Huh? Why?
In hindsight, I wish I had better to offer than an Imgur album, but the tl;dr version is he allegedly sent dick pics to a 12 year old shortly before Loss was posted. Some more conspiracy minded folks believe that it may have been a smokescreen to distract from his real life actions, but I don’t have any proof of that and I’d personally like to believe he isn’t that heinous.
Huh. What a waste of oxygen.
