"There were, originally, twelve distinct and divine concepts of transmissible life. This number twelve, with its subdivisions and multiples, runs throughout all basic life patterns of all seven super universes. There are also seven architectural types of life design, fundamental arrangements of the reproducing configurations of living matter. The Orvonton life patterns are configured as twelve inheritance carriers. The differing orders of will creatures are configured as 12, 24, 48, 96, 192, 384, and 768. On Urantia there are forty-eight units of pattern control--trait determiners--in the sex cells of human reproduction. (397)

"On Urantia there were twenty-four such custodian commissioners, two for each fundamental or parent pattern of the architectural organization of the life material. On planets such as yours the highest form of life is reproduced by a life-carrying bundle which possesses twenty-four pattern units." (398)

"These life circuits caused the chromosomes of the specialized Urantia pattern to reorganize..." (857)

There are several ways by which these statements from the book may be misinterpreted. That there are 48 units of pattern control in the sex cells could mean that each of the two types of sex cell (egg and sperm) has 48 units, or it could mean that together the two types have 48 units. The statement that the highest form of life on Urantia is reproduced by a life-carrying bundle possessing 24 pattern units favors the interpretation that the 48 units are distributed as 24 units in each of the two types of sex cell. But perhaps we humans are not that form of life! A further possibility is that the 48 units could be taken to mean 48 chromosomes.

The mention of chromosomes on p. 857 shows that the revelators were familiar with the term and may indicate that trait determiners or units of pattern control are not necessarily synonymous with chromosomes. We should also note that equating "trait determiners," "units of pattern control," and "inheritance carriers"  with one another may not be a valid assumption.

It was not until 1954 that it was realized that the human chromosome number, until then thought to be 48, was in actuality 46. It is 48 in our cousins, the monkeys and the apes, but due to the fusion of two of our chromosomes, we now only have 46. Some readers have been concerned that the revelators made an error.

It is now known that only about 5% of the DNA in our chromosomes actually codes for the one to two hundred thousand genes that make us a functional being. Our DNA is comprised of about three thousand million DNA letters and the average gene uses the information coded in only a few thousand bases.

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We can get an idea of what might be reality by making some approximations. Let's assume that the 12 fundamental "inheritance carriers" are not chromosomes but units of pattern control critical for morphogenetic development. Let's also assume that each unit consists, on average, of twenty genes bundled together as an entity.

Together then, the 12 units of pattern control account for 12 x 20 = 240 genes. Hence the Urantia mortal's 48 units of pattern control would require 960 genes--a little less than 0.5 to 1 percent of our gene complement of 1 to 2 hundred thousand genes. The extreme value of 768 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)