Page 24 - The Miracle of Human Creation

THE MIRACLE OF HUMAN CREATION

according to a planned program, as an encyclopedia, the volumes of this
encyclopedia are its chromosomes.
It is very important that these chromosome volumes occur in pairs in
the DNA molecule. In the process of his creation, every human being re-
ceives one of these two chromosome volumes from his mother and the ot-
her from his father. The 23 chromosomes that come from the mother and
the 23 that come from the father are of are complementary to one another.
That is, the 46 chromosomes in the nucleus of a human cell are actually 23
pairs of chromosomes. The 23 chromosome has a special function: it is
rd
usually denoted by the letter X or Y. In males, one of the members of the
pair is the X chromosome, the other is the Y chromosome; in females, the
rd
23 chromosome is composed of two X's.
In light of this information a question comes to mind: if every human
cell is composed of 46 chromosomes, how is it that as a result of the com-
bination of a mother's and a father's cells, the newly born individual has
46 chromosomes? It would seem logical for the mother's 46 chromosomes
and the father's 46 chromosomes to produce an abnormal baby with 92
chromosomes. But this is not the case. How is it then that everyone is born
with 46 chromosomes?
The answer to this question shows the great wonder of creation.

An Unerring Division...

In the cells of the body two kinds of division take place. Of these, the
kind of division called "mitosis" occurs in all the body's cells. During mi-
tosis, one cell gives rise to two genetically identical daughter cells. As a re-
sult of this division, the mother cell divides to form two daughter cells,
each containing the same number and kind of chromosomes as the mot-
her cell.
Here, it is necessary to make one point clear at the outset. If the rep-
roductive cells divided in this way and if they had the same number of
chromosomes as the other cells in the body, it would not be possible for a
human being to become a human being because, as we explained above,

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