Originally posted by: Go-Mer-Tonic
They may inherit the Mitochondria from the mother, but the concentration of mitochodria per cell could be another hereditary trait passed on by the father.

The reason that we now theorise that mitochondria, and chloroplasts as well, started out as unicellular organisms which other cells engulfed and, eventually, turned into intracellular bodies without any independence, is that both contain a circular strand of DNA. This is a trait of bacteria and totally different to the chromosomal DNA in nuclei. This circular DNA controls much of the reproduction and activity of these bodies. I have never seen any evidence that heredity has any hand in determining the numbers of mitochondria (or chloroplasts) in cells.

Numbers do vary according to the type of cell in question. For example, muscle tissue cells are rich in mitochondria, whereas red blood cells have none.

The claim in the PT is that midichlorians are symbiotes, not intracellular bodies. If I remember correctly, though, Qui-Gon does say that they are found inside cells, am I right?

Unless one comes up with an entirely new idea for how sexual reproduction occurs in the humans in the SW galaxy, then one must accept that cell contents are inherited from the mother. The only thing passed on from the father is his half of the child's genome. The midichlorians would come from the mother. These would then, presumably, reproduce and distribute themselves among the cells of the growing foetus as they divide and multiply.

Go-Mer-Tonic's theory would require that "Force-sensitive" beings (and particularly members of the Skywalker family) have some sort of hereditary trait that makes them a better habitat for the midichlorians, promoting the development of unusually large colonies of them in the body.

This theory encounters problems in the form of the Jedi's laws of celibacy. If no Jedi (or Sith?) have ever reproduced for "over a thousand generations", then the likelihood of this hereditary trait occuring spontaneously, by mutation, in multiple species regularly enough to allow for the order to survive by taking on new apprentices is extremely unlikely.

Even a recessive trait would eventually disappear over such a long time period if those showing the trait are always removed from the gene pool. One could argue that some of those with the trait may not be taken into the order, but the implication in TPM is that this is unlikely. Even if it did happen, over the time period given, I do not think that the evidence supports the theory.