200 divisions from death

conversation between human and paramecium

h: How's your nuclei today?
p: It's a private matter. None of your concern.
h: Can you tell me where you come from?
p: It depends.
h: On what?
p: On whether my parents had sex.
h: Did they?
p: I'm not sure. I may never know.
h: What about DNA testing?
p: You need a human to run the equipment.
h: Is there any other way?
p: It takes 200 generations to find out. If our parents have sex it resets the aging clock. Then we can divide another 200 times. Then we die.
h: That's too bad.
p: Not really. If we have sex at any point, it resets the clock again. We get 200 more divisions.
h: Why the shyness about your nuclei?
p: When we divide without sex, the micronucleus makes an identical copy, but the macronucleus doesn't replicate. It halves itself -- getting smaller and smaller with each division until it becomes too scrambled to function.
h: What happens during sex?
p: We undergo meiosis and create two haploid micronuclei. We swap and fuse. The new micronuclei direct production of new macronuclei.
h: What happens to the old macronuclei?
p: They just fade away.

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2-11/16 p-11-15-05\139.j