detweiler and clones?

We have clearly seen gene-cleaning in what Allison Chou Harrington did with the discovery of the gengennering of the Grayson Colonists to survive the heavy metal contamination of the planet. The treatment is to "scrub" the problem genes (its way more complicated than that as there are always so many interactions between various segments of genes in the body) from the egg and sperm formation of individuals. That lets them go forward and have children who do not carry the parts of genes that lead to the massively large % of males to die prior to birth or not make it into early stages of gestation.

That this was implemented as a treatment on Grayson would indicate that it was within the Beowulf Code as far as a medical treatment goes. If not, somebody (some thousands of somebody's) would have been protesting right back to Beowulf and it's medical population.

Yes, it is an OPTIONAL treatment- it does not appear to be mandated by Grayson, it's an individual decision- , but it is a treatment that is being embraced by Grayson.

What constitutes a medical correction vs an "enhancement" prohibited by the Beowulf Code? That is what matters.

Brigade XO wrote:We have clearly seen gene-cleaning in what Allison Chou Harrington did with the discovery of the gengennering of the Grayson Colonists to survive the heavy metal contamination of the planet. The treatment is to "scrub" the problem genes (its way more complicated than that as there are always so many interactions between various segments of genes in the body) from the egg and sperm formation of individuals. That lets them go forward and have children who do not carry the parts of genes that lead to the massively large % of males to die prior to birth or not make it into early stages of gestation.

That this was implemented as a treatment on Grayson would indicate that it was within the Beowulf Code as far as a medical treatment goes. If not, somebody (some thousands of somebody's) would have been protesting right back to Beowulf and it's medical population.

Yes, it is an OPTIONAL treatment- it does not appear to be mandated by Grayson, it's an individual decision- , but it is a treatment that is being embraced by Grayson.

What constitutes a medical correction vs an "enhancement" prohibited by the Beowulf Code? That is what matters.

Well that one was pretty straightforward as a medical correction - it was a clearly unintended secondary mutation many (but not all) colonists got which was lethal to fetal development. Leaving the heavy metal adaptation and undoing the secondary unintended and unwanted mutation (aka reverting those genes back to human 'baseline') is unquestionably correction.

And, FWIW, the Beowulf code is not against "enhancement". It's just against using non-human genetic sequences in an attempt at achieving that enhancement. But there are plenty of, for example, heavy world mods that are perfectly kosher under the Beowulf Code. So you don't have to justify every genetic therapy or treatment as a medical correction

Theemile wrote:The question would be how to read the donor's epigenetics to determine how to get a specific result and reproduce them reliably. We certainly can't go back to the mother (at the time of the donor's gestation) and record them there after the fact.

You can't "read" a donor's epigenetics. Epigenetics means that genes are turned on or off over time which influences how a person develop. It might be possible to determine what genes are active at the time you took a DNA-sample from a donor, but that doesn't help you determine what other configurations they've had over time since the donor was conceived.

Joat42 wrote:

Theemile wrote:The question would be how to read the donor's epigenetics to determine how to get a specific result and reproduce them reliably. We certainly can't go back to the mother (at the time of the donor's gestation) and record them there after the fact.

You can't "read" a donor's epigenetics. Epigenetics means that genes are turned on or off over time which influences how a person develop. It might be possible to determine what genes are active at the time you took a DNA-sample from a donor, but that doesn't help you determine what other configurations they've had over time since the donor was conceived.

No, I understand "how" epigenetics work, I'm just stating that in order to accomplish perfect cloning, the cloner would be required to read those genetic switches from the Donor cells, understand what was required to get them to be set in that manner during the Donor's development, and develop a treatment on a tube fetus that would recreate it.

I'm not saying it's even possible, only that would be the level of genetic understanding necessary to do accomplish a perfect biological clone.

And the Honorverse seems to have the ability to control epigenetics (to some degree) due to the prevalence of tubing and the lack of a scientific argument between tubing and natural child Gestation.

Theemile wrote:
And the Honorverse seems to have the ability to control epigenetics (to some degree) due to the prevalence of tubing and the lack of a scientific argument between tubing and natural child Gestation.

But that degree likely doesn't have to be very fine. There's enough variability in natural gestation that no two pregnancies get the same environmental stimuli. So I'd think, for tubing, all they're really need is an understanding of the range of necessary and safe stimuli -- within that range they could pick randomly for all it should matter for non-cloned children. (Sure that likely means that they won't turn out exactly like they would have with a natural birth -- but if you could rewind the clock on that natural gestation I'd bet that if you let it play out 100 times there'd be enough butterfly effects that you'd get 100 different outcomes anyway)

And even most folks who clone themselves probably aren't expecting an absolutely perfect 100% carbon copy.

So the level of tracking and control of the environmental factors that trigger epigenetic events you'd need for a safe tube birth seem at least a order of magnitude less than you'd need to try to generate identical epigenetic triggering between two tubed embryos (where, at least in theory, you could have full control of all environmental triggers during development and might be able to replay the same ones). And that would probably be a couple of orders of magnitude easier than wiring up a woman to track and capture all the environmental triggers an embryos she carried to term naturally. And as for trying to work out after the fact what triggers an embryo had been subjected too -- my guess is that'd be flat out impossible short of time travel to add live monitoring (which would probably change them anyway)

Jonathan_S wrote:So the level of tracking and control of the environmental factors that trigger epigenetic events you'd need for a safe tube birth seem at least a order of magnitude less than you'd need to try to generate identical epigenetic triggering between two tubed embryos (where, at least in theory, you could have full control of all environmental triggers during development and might be able to replay the same ones).

Epigenetic changes continue until the day you die but they are most influential during the embryonic stage and up to puberty.

If you want to dig into the whole thing and the more "technical things", there's quite a good write-up here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4207041/

Jonathan_S wrote:So the level of tracking and control of the environmental factors that trigger epigenetic events you'd need for a safe tube birth seem at least a order of magnitude less than you'd need to try to generate identical epigenetic triggering between two tubed embryos (where, at least in theory, you could have full control of all environmental triggers during development and might be able to replay the same ones).

Also, as certain complex things happen within the embryo / body, and quantum mechanics include randomness, the butterfly effect may make it effectively impossible to produce an exact replication of epigenetics at all, even if everything is know exactly.

Joat42 wrote:

phillies wrote:A really good cloning system would continue to act after growth began so that the epigenetic modifications were duplicated.

I've hard time envisioning how that would be possible. Epigenetic development means that genes are switched on and off over time depending on different types of internal and external stimuli and the end result is a long chain of events akin to the butterfly effect.

Didn't Manpower do that, especially with the Pleasure lines? Started sexual training while they were still pre-teens? There's mention in From the Highlands of what happened to one such Manpower trainer who left the Mesa/Manpower bubble on Old Earth. "Hoist on his own petard" was the note left on his body.

Joat42 wrote:

Theemile wrote:The question would be how to read the donor's epigenetics to determine how to get a specific result and reproduce them reliably. We certainly can't go back to the mother (at the time of the donor's gestation) and record them there after the fact.

You can't "read" a donor's epigenetics. Epigenetics means that genes are turned on or off over time which influences how a person develop. It might be possible to determine what genes are active at the time you took a DNA-sample from a donor, but that doesn't help you determine what other configurations they've had over time since the donor was conceived.

It is possible that 400 years into the future something could be done about this thàt we couldn'
couldn't do today.

Don

_

Joat42 wrote:

Theemile wrote:The question would be how to read the donor's epigenetics to determine how to get a specific result and reproduce them reliably. We certainly can't go back to the mother (at the time of the donor's gestation) and record them there after the fact.

You can't "read" a donor's epigenetics. Epigenetics means that genes are turned on or off over time which influences how a person develop. It might be possible to determine what genes are active at the time you took a DNA-sample from a donor, but that doesn't help you determine what other configurations they've had over time since the donor was conceived.

n7axw wrote:It is possible that 400 years into the future something could be done about this that we couldn't do today.

Don

It's not a technology issue, it's an information issue - or rather the lack of information.

Imagine you have a row of switches in different positions, you take a photograph of them for later comparison. 1 year later you return and use the prior photograph for comparison. 1/3 of the switches are now in a different position but you have no idea what switches has been "switched" and how many times during the 1 year period, all you have is the current configuration and the old configuration.

It's the same with epigenetics, unless you constantly monitor what genes are switched off/on as time passes you have no clue what genes where active/inactive and when, and how that affected development.

Can you use future technology to infer what genes where active and when? Possibly, but there's no guarantee that the end result will be exactly the same as the original because there are also other factors in play, like how a stressful experience can activate genes that work in conjunction with the psychological effect to shape a person while they are growing up. Even background radiation can affect epigenetics and that is something totally random.

A person is the sum of their experiences, environment and genetics over time - none of those can be recreated reliably when creating a clone.