Channeler biology

[Silver]

ok, first off i just want to say that yes i think up weird questions. i tend to think over things people take for granted instead of big plot line things :P

 

note 2, i only have a basic understanding of human biology so please correct me if i'm wrong

 

 

 

ok, now...

my question is concerning female channelers. in a normal person, i woman starts puberty around 15 (guessing for wot world, not ours) and gets PMS every month till she's around 50 when she gets menopause. a woman will produce fewer than 500 eggs in her life time and these numbers support that (420).

 

now, my question is how is this different for female channelers? i'm going to assume they have the same biology and we know they can get pregnant. with these in mind, i see 3 main possibilities.

 

1) her body works exactly the same as a normal human and she will be barren for most of her life

 

2) since a channelers life is about 10 times longer than a normal humans (average age would be about 60, channeler age about 500-600), perhaps PMS would come every 9-10 months for a channeler?

 

3) the egg takes more than the normal few days to be flushed out, instead takes months, so the channeler is always in a state of PMS (this can be supported by the attitude of Aes Sedai ;) :P )

 

 

 

again, yes i'm weird 8)

[Guest cwestervelt]

Puberty generally will occur before the first touching of the source. Egwene is considered of marriageable age before they left the Two Rivers. I would have to assume that having reached puberty is a requirement of that. The indications in the book also point to female channellers having menstral cycles similar to a normal person. Somewhere Elayne even comments on how her and Birgitte's periods started to syncronize.

 

The only real difference between a channeller and non channeller is that, because the channeller will slow, menopause will occur at a much later date than in a normal woman.

[Silver]

yes, but what about their monthly cycles? there are only a limited number of eggs in the human body and in a normal person these mature once every month. so, if channelers slow, does that include their monthly cycles?

 

also, does this mean that getting a channeler pregnant would take much longer since if she doesn't get pregnant during her next cycle, they'd have to wait 9-10 months before they could try again?

[Guest cwestervelt]

As I said earlier, Elayne complains about her and Brigitte having their periods start to syncronize. For that to happen, it would imply that Elayne has a regular menstrual cycle.

 

Assuming that to be the case, and that she starts with the same number of ova as a woman in our world (average of four hundred thousand according to http://www.every-thing.net/everything_ns/person.html) she would have enough ova to release 1 per month for thirty three thousand three hundred thirty three years.

 

Addition: Technically, it would by four hundred thousand oocytes. The aren't ova at that stage yet.

[Silver]

ahh ok. didn't know those numbers. now i'm wondering what determines when menopause starts :P

[SinisterDeath]

That link... Wow.. I could actually see people going 'O gadz! I'm behind I gotta catch up!!!'

[Darthbob]

Deep man deep. Very nice.

[Thor]

Aging is basically due to our cells continuousy dividing and inevitably some errors are made during the billions and billions of DNA replication. That's why cancer is much more frequent in older people (except for some special cases where 10-11 year olds have high rates).

 

So channeling obviously make their DNA replication more accurate somehow.

 

Might want to look up telomerase too, though I don't think channelers' telomerase is too different from normal people's.

[chuckievi]

Well the problem is that when DNA is replicated the very ends of the DNA strands aren't replicated. Aging occurs over time as the DNA strands get shorter and shorter. The reason some people "age well" is that their "junk" DNA at the end of the strands containts more base-pairs. So they have more to lose before the effects of aging become apparent. One possible explination for slowing is that it refines the DNA replication process so that fewer base pairs are lost per replication cycle. So you would look and essentially be younger for a longer period.

[SinisterDeath]

There was an expirement dealing with fruit flies? Or something a while ago. Lets say they normally lived 30 days. Near the end of that 30 days they mated, laid eggs and died.

What scientists did was for roughly 50 generations, didn't allow the flies to mate for longer and longer periods of time, from 29 days to 30 days to 40 days to 50 days... When they were talking about it, they had the flies living from there normal 30 days to 120 days. Now whats that got to do with Aes Sedia? Very little, however they don't have a reputation for looking 'old', even wiseones, the kin. But who knows, maybe being a channeler and never having woopie might prolongue there life....

 

*It would probably take 100 generations for humans to even reach a benefitial increased lifespan by not having 'sex' or children at olde rand older ages... But its only really 'proven' in flies, and our 'biology' is a bit different from a flies.. Its basically along the idea that after you have kids your biological need to 'let your bloodline extend' is about the time when you start to die 'age'....

[Trib4l]

Being able to channel can clearly affect the physical. Besides the obvious references to slowing, in tEotW we see Aginor actually regain his youthful appearance as he draws more and more of saidin from the Eye.

 

It obviously has very little to do with odd breeding practices, besides passing the gene that enables channeling.