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[animedreamer]

and by extension the other Milky Way races (though now that I think about it, it probably doesn't affect the Aliens nearly as much since Mordin specifically pointed out it's humanity that was genetic diverse)

 

Let's think for a second. How many members of humanity need to survive the departure from the Milky Way Galaxy in order for the race to actually survive? 1000? 2000? 5000? 10,000? 100,000? Honestly all these numbers are too small. I'm not a scientist, or some kind of geneticist but even if any of the above numbers or any close to them are the representatives of humanity that are left, then the genetic makeup of humanity is definitely destroyed beyond repair. Quick google search came up with there being 7.1 billion people on Earth, the chart showed this line graph starting from 1960 to 2010 to reach that number, going by that by 2183 the year in which Mass Effect 1 takes place there would have been 24 billion people living on Earth or spread throughout the Milky Way. 

 

I think it kind of goes back to what Mordin was saying about humans and their variable genetic diversity. Like it or not, it's a boon for humanity to have such strengths, and this is entirely based on us as a species not our various cultures or beliefs. As I understand it in layman's terms, by having GD in a such a large population being able to spread it out insures that recessive genetic traits stay minimized or marginalized, as well as increasing the probability of adaptations occurring that may be beneficial.

 

So back to Mass Effect and what we believe is going on so far. We know there is in fact an exodus taking place prior to the climax of Mass Effect 3. Supposedly the goal is to find a new home for humanity. Honestly it sounds like there is 1 ship doing this, but we can't say for certain at this point, but if it were one ship, how many people could it possible house, stay off the radar of the reapers and their indoctrinated agents, and escape to another galaxy in the hopes of colonization? 24 billion people down-sized to a couple of thousands or even hundred thousands would be disastrous for said GD. 

 

I admit a lot of this don't know if this would effect the story, but as far as the makeup of what is considered "the human race/humanity." it definitely could. There are a lot of issues that I could project from Real Life on to this hypothetical thread, but for the sake of not wanting to make this some kind of social justice thread mixed with ME I'm going to refrain from those, im starting to wonder if not how big a hole BioWare might have written themselves into with this franchise.

 

Finally a funny little something I remembered by the end of this, (just focus on what Quincy Jones says.)

https://youtu.be/o_7...PTmyew1dw&t=115

[Han Shot First]

The founding population of an interstellar colony should consist of 20,000 to 40,000 people, said Cameron Smith, an anthropologist at Portland State University in Oregon. Such a large group would possess a great deal of genetic and demographic diversity, giving the settlement the best chance of survival during the long space voyage and beyond, he explained.

 

"Do you want to just squeak by, with barely what you can get? Or do you want to go in good health?" Smith said on July 16 during a presentation with NASA's Future In-Space Operations (FISO) working group. "I would suggest, go with something that gives you a good margin for the case of disaster."

 

Space.com

[ZoliCs]

Let's think for a second. How many members of humanity need to survive the departure from the Milky Way Galaxy in order for the race to actually survive? 1000? 2000? 5000? 10,000? 100,000? Honestly all these numbers are too small.

 

The bare minimum is around 160 IIRC.

[Lady Artifice]

A lot of the population concerns can be written around thanks to things that are already established in the lore, like Tank breeding and cloning technology.

 

Of course, that could raise other ethical discussions, but those just provide more fodder for conflict within the story.

[SardaukarElite]

It's a BioWare game, there'll be talkin' 'n' shootin' 'n' dancin'. I would expect we'll be shipping several thousand (at least) humans over on ice because BioWare likes to make big games with lots of people in them, not close intimate games about a handful of people in one settlement on one planet. 

 

ME already has some seriously big ships in it, there's nothing really stopping a lot of people being  moved. 

[Kabooooom]

The bare minimum is around 160 IIRC.

It's highly speculative, but yes - this is generally considered around the number for a bare minimum viable population.

That said, there have been numerous real world examples of viable populations that were founded by less than twenty men and women. However, almost all of them suffered from the founder effect.

It's worth noting that genetic engineering in the future would be a means of artificially creating genetic diversity in a small population too.

[PlatonicWaffles]

We know there is in fact an exodus taking place prior to the climax of Mass Effect 3. Supposedly the goal is to find a new home for humanity. 

Do we know it for a fact, though? I thought it was mass speculation. It wasn't mentioned in the leak AFAIK.

[MrObnoxiousUK]

I imagine any type of colony effort will in addition to a suitable number of men and women will also have a sperm and egg bank to make up for any lack of genetic diversity.

[7twozero]

They didn't call the pc rider for nothing, gonna have to spend a lot of time in the bone zone to repopulate the species.

[KaiserShep]

It's highly speculative, but yes - this is generally considered around the number for a bare minimum viable population.
That said, there have been numerous real world examples of viable populations that were founded by less than twenty men and women. However, almost all of them suffered from the founder effect.
It's worth noting that genetic engineering in the future would be a means of artificially creating genetic diversity in a small population too.

After all, this is the same universe in which a woman can be created by altering a Y chromosome.

[Pasquale1234]

It's worth noting that genetic engineering in the future would be a means of artificially creating genetic diversity in a small population too.

This. There is already a lot of genetic manipulation in the population - there was a sidequest in ME1's Noveria where Shepard could pose as a potential buyer of genetic mods for soldiers from Binary Helix.

They could also pack a sperm bank and some frozen embryos for good measure.

[Kabooooom]

After all, this is the same universe in which a woman can be created by altering a Y chromosome.

I might have read your post completely wrong, forgive me if I did. But this is totally possible to do.

http://www.sciencedi...379417206600036

And

http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/2247151/

To list two of hundreds such examples. SRY is a 'master switch' of sorts, but there are a number of genes involved in male sex determination located on Y and autosomes. Targeted, deliberate mutations could produce an XY female (an infertile one, at that) with no other deleterious aspects of the phenotype (unlike the mutations which arise naturally, especially in SRY and lead to various syndromes of sex determination).

Now, why you would actually want to do this is another story...because it would be pretty useless.

[ABASOVA]

I would like to see this being successfully done for humans in the Mass Effect Universe as well as having it as an option in our own future: http://www.nature.co...ws040419-8.html. It would've been nice for my wife and I to have this right about now, but alas we will end up going the IVF/surrogacy route. 

 

 

Actually. hey Traynor, we can adopt and have babies with each other too. Can't be anymore expensive than your toothbrush or the Lazarus project  .

[Heimdall]

It's highly speculative, but yes - this is generally considered around the number for a bare minimum viable population.

That said, there have been numerous real world examples of viable populations that were founded by less than twenty men and women. However, almost all of them suffered from the founder effect.

It's worth noting that genetic engineering in the future would be a means of artificially creating genetic diversity in a small population too.

I recall from codex entries that hereditary genetic diseases have been mostly eliminated and ME humans are able to screen for and correct genetic flaws in the womb. Notably, Ashley had a disposition to nearsightedness corrected before she was born, I recall.

[PresidentVorchaMasterBaits]

THREAD TITLE DISGUSTING! KEEP GENETIC MATERIALS TO YOURSELVES DIRTY PERVS! VORCHA WANT NO PART OF IT!!!

[Kabooooom]

I recall from codex entries that hereditary genetic diseases have been mostly eliminated and ME humans are able to screen for and correct genetic flaws in the womb. Notably, Ashley had a disposition to nearsightedness corrected before she was born, I recall.

This is true - I forgot about that. There was also that conversation with the couple about in vitro genetic modification in ME1 and 2 (I think). It is probably widespread in the ME universe. Hell, it'll be widespread by 2100 in real life. Maybe 2050 if ignorant people get over their aversion to it. The science and technology is almost there now. It requires affordable personal genetic sequencing and the advent of truly tailoring medical treatment to the individual. There is already a shift towards this in medicine today, and it will continue to head in that direction. By the time cheap and efficient genetic sequencing and modification is commonplace, people hopefully wont think twice about it.

So on that note, it IS hypothetically possible to found a population with an extremely limited number of individuals while not amplifying maladaptive alleles. With that sort of technology, genetic diversity wouldn't be an issue either.

So I could foresee an Ark voyage with a relatively sparse population of living colonists. Add sperm/egg banks and artificial wombs (which we know is possible in Mass Effect thanks to clone-Shep and the cloned Krogans) and you technically wouldn't even need any colonists at all.

[Dantriges]

Quick google search came up with there being 7.1 billion people on Earth, the chart showed this line graph starting from 1960 to 2010 to reach that number, going by that by 2183 the year in which Mass Effect 1 takes place there would have been 24 billion people living on Earth or spread throughout the Milky Way. 
 
I think it kind of goes back to what Mordin was saying about humans and their variable genetic diversity. Like it or not, it's a boon for humanity to have such strengths, and this is entirely based on us as a species not our various cultures or beliefs.

The population numbers in the ME verse were a lot lower, 12 billion IIRC, whic is nnt unreasonable considering that population growth slowed down a lot in developed countries. It is even below numbers needed to keep the population stable in some/most cases.

We aren´t especially genetcally diverse compared to other species on our planet. This whole diversity shtick is something copied from 4X space games or RPGs where humans get the trait diverse, versatile or sometimes charismatic/diplomatic because the other niches are already taken.

[Kabooooom]

The population numbers in the ME verse were a lot lower, 12 billion IIRC, whic is nnt unreasonable considering that population growth slowed down a lot in developed countries. It is even below numbers needed to keep the population stable in some/most cases.

We aren´t especially genetcally diverse compared to other species on our planet. This whole diversity shtick is something copied from 4X space games or RPGs where humans get the trait diverse, versatile or sometimes charismatic/diplomatic because the other niches are already taken.

In fact, the exact opposite is true - humanity suffered a severe genetic bottleneck between 70,000 and 50,000 years ago, during which our species almost went extinct. We were reduced to between 1,000 and 10,000 breeding pairs, and probably closer to the low end of that estimate.

Which always bothered me about Mordin's comment...it is obviously false.

[Han Shot First]

A lot of the population concerns can be written around thanks to things that are already established in the lore, like Tank breeding and cloning technology.

 

Of course, that could raise other ethical discussions, but those just provide more fodder for conflict within the story.

 

That's a good point, and also the route the movie Interstellar went. They had the astronauts packing thousands? of human embryos for their voyage to potentially habitable planets.

[Dantriges]

In fact, the exact opposite is true - humanity suffered a severe genetic bottleneck between 70,000 and 50,000 years ago, during which our species almost went extinct. We were reduced to between 1,000 and 10,000 breeding pairs, and probably closer to the low end of that estimate.

Which always bothered me about Mordin's comment...it is obviously false.

Ah thanks. I meant that event, but I couldn´t remember the details so I left out the specifics.

[Ahglock]

In fact, the exact opposite is true - humanity suffered a severe genetic bottleneck between 70,000 and 50,000 years ago, during which our species almost went extinct. We were reduced to between 1,000 and 10,000 breeding pairs, and probably closer to the low end of that estimate.

Which always bothered me about Mordin's comment...it is obviously false.

And?

Do you know the genetic diversity of the fictional alien races? Do you know the level of genetic diversity for humanity in the future, maybe events caused mutations which expanded the rage of human diversity.

Maybe compared to them we are diverse. Maybe a consistent trait of advanced sentient life in the ME universe is lack of genetic diversity.

IOW it's not a lie.

[Master Warder Z_]

So on that note, it IS hypothetically possible to found a population with an extremely limited number of individuals while not amplifying maladaptive alleles. With that sort of technology, genetic diversity wouldn't be an issue either.

 

Watch the Ark turn into House Lannister 

[Dantriges]

And?

Do you know the genetic diversity of the fictional alien races? Do you know the level of genetic diversity for humanity in the future, maybe events caused mutations which expanded the rage of human diversity.

Maybe compared to them we are diverse. Maybe a consistent trait of advanced sentient life in the ME universe is lack of genetic diversity.

IOW it's not a lie.

 

It´s based on everyone else is wearing a hat of being the warrior, the biotic, the berserker race, we don´t. Out of the same box as every asari maiden is a stripper or merc, dunno why this university Liara graduated at, even existed.

[Han Shot First]

And?

Do you know the genetic diversity of the fictional alien races? Do you know the level of genetic diversity for humanity in the future, maybe events caused mutations which expanded the rage of human diversity.

Maybe compared to them we are diverse. Maybe a consistent trait of advanced sentient life in the ME universe is lack of genetic diversity.

IOW it's not a lie.

 

It is a bit of a stretch that every species would be less genetically diverse than humanity, a species that isn't diverse at all thanks to a severe genetic bottleneck. Essentially it requires every known space-faring species to have had its own version of the Toba catastrophe, except more recent and/or more severe. 

 

Human genetic diversity being tied heavily into ME2's plot was perhaps the worst example of the always bad Humans Are Special trope, because it was birthed from the writer(s) being unfamiliar with humanity's genetic history. A google search that would have taken the writer(s) about 30 seconds, would have told them genetic diversity being the Reapers' reason for interest in humanity was a bad idea.

[von uber]

Humans are more gentically diverse than the asari, who breed by selecting genetics from other species to keep themselves diverse?

Righto, bioware.