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units of pattern control would then require about 7.5 to 15 percent of the gene complement.
Why would any creature require 64 replications of the basic 12 units of pattern control? One reason might be that there is a marked increase in the rate of copying mistakes under the extreme conditions experienced on some planets and a large number of copies of the control units is required to ensure survival of the individual (note: there is some evidence that polyploid plants have a degree of hardiness not present in their diploid ancestry).
Perhaps also we are missing something that has deep significance in the apparent coincidence of "seven architectural types of life design" and the seven doublings in the sequence 12, 24, 48, 96, 192, 384, 768?
There appears to be no essential reason to equate a unit of pattern control with a chromosome and certainly no good reason to distribute the units on the basis of one per chromosome. The only requirement appears to be that these units behave as pairs in much the same manner as do pairs of genes during cell division. Hence the confusion caused by equating the 48 units of pattern control with the erroneous chromosome number of 48 may be a simple case of "jumping to conclusions."
Reference: Jones, S. "The Language of the Genes." (Flamingo Press, London, 1993)
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