quite possibly a cat wrote:JohnRoth wrote:
I don't think you understand what the term 'dominant' means in genetics. It applies to single genes only. If you have a function that's scattered over multiple locations on multiple chromosomes (the usual case) and the mod plugs the changes into both copies of each affected gene, the children will have it on only one chromosome of each pair, and many of the grandchildren will inherit only part of it. That is, essential pieces will be missing.
Context clues in the books indicate that "dominant" meant "gene drive for 100% inheritance".
Similar to how "wormhole" means "spooky handwavium".JohnRoth wrote:Yep. And since a mod like that touches quite a bit of the genome, there are going to be bits and pieces in many places on several chromosomes. There is no way of insuring something like that sticks together without some Really Interesting Mechanism (aka hand-waving.)
Or you put all the new proteins on one chromosome, and silence anything you want to remove. Which would involve some pretty impressive bioengineering, but is totally possible.
The first piece is right: it certainly would be a very impressive piece of bio-engineering. The second piece (is totally possible) is questionable.
I used to think that it could work that way, but then the science got updated. What's new in the last few years is that chromosomes have a very specific 3D structure in each cell type and it's different in different cell types. That structure in large part determines what genes get expressed and not expressed.
If you put the new stuff on a separate (new) chromosome, that chromosome would have to do more contortions than Houdini to function. To work at all, the new chromosome would have to modify the cellular mechanisms underlying the process of sperm meeting egg so there was a new phase where instructions got copied off of it to make changes to the rest of the genome. That's what I've seen called the "genome modification platform" in some fiction, and it has to be there first.
That would light up any DNA analysis like a fireworks show saying: major gene mods present. That would make it difficult to hide, for example, Mesan Alphas.
Oh, and it adds another whole layer of weird to figure out how to handle multiple incompatible mods inherited from different parents.
(PS - please be a bit careful editing posts. I've had to fix two mis-attributions in this thread already.)