(Spoilers) UH questions and discussion

Given some of the recent posts on gene dominance, it is clear that some of the posters on this forum are unfamiliar how (super) dominant genes work in the fiction of the Honorverse, which is different from (normal) gene dominance in both the real world and the Honorverse.

Gene dominance among modified strains

tlb wrote:

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JohnRoth wrote:Sigh. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

To use the high school textbook example, let's say you've got a single gene that has a dominant and recessive version. Let's call it A, with the dominant version being a capital A and the recessive version being a small letter a.

Now, assume that one parent has the recessive version, meaning aa, and the other has a dominant-recessive pair, meaning Aa.

The children are going to be half Aa and half aa.

This is bog-standard Mendelian inheritance, which has been well understood since Mendel's work was rediscovered in the early 20th century.

The fact that a variation is dominant does not mean that it will be inherited. Dominance does NOT mean "it will be inherited."

If a parent is guaranteed to pass it to ALL of cis children, then it's locked. That's one of the two things that locked means.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:Any GE mods to enable colonization of a marginal planet would be designed to be dominant and all colonists would be getting two copies of the dominant mod to ensure that their descents will survive the adverse conditions. Barring further immigration, only random mutation would result in people having any other gene. If someone gets a double copies of the mutated gene, they will be maladapted and likely short lived.

Honorverse genetic engineering should be far more advanced than we can imagine. They might have techniques such as viruses and prions included in the physiology that rewrite any mutations or hybridized alternatives to the critical genes.

There is imprecision in the highlighted quote. If either parent is "AA" then all the children will express the Meyerdahl modification. If both parents are "Aa", then three out of four children will express that modification. If one parent is "Aa" and the other parent is "aa", then only two out of four will express that modification.
The question is what happens to the "aa" child in a heavy gravity environment? If the environment is extreme, then they would be disadvantaged socially and maritally.[/quote]

Any person lacking the modifications that were deemed neccessary for survival on a particular planet is likely to have difficulty surviving. Even if they live to adulthood, their physiological disadvantages will be apparent. The males at least will have difficulty getting a date on Saturday night. The females will no doubt not be perceived as attractive but they will still get dates because men are far less discriminating than women.

I would imagine that given advanced medical technology they could keep the genetically disasvantaged alive but it would be expensive. No doubt genetic counciling ornother, more coeercive measures would be employed to discourage them from passing on their defective genes.

Vince wrote:Given some of the recent posts on gene dominance, it is clear that some of the posters on this forum are unfamiliar how (super) dominant genes work in the fiction of the Honorverse, which is different from (normal) gene dominance in both the real world and the Honorverse.

Gene dominance among modified strains

Thanks for the reference. And yes, that's exactly what happens in the design I mentioned - there's an extra subphase after sperm meets egg and before any cell divisions where the mods are applied. RFC is leaving the actual mechanism undefined, which is fine. I never thought there was only one way to do it, only that there had to be a mechanism lurking around somewhere that did it.

As a technical side note: there are a couple of mechanisms like that known, although they only apply to single genes. The gene drive mechanism that's currently being tested to wipe out the mosquitoes that spread a number of diseases are another example.

The fundamental issue is definitional - the use of the term "dominant" instead of what we've been using recently, "locked." And I'm going to disagree with RFC - specialist terminology does not change that rapidly. There are all kinds of examples of terms used in technical fields that originally had the common meaning but now don't mean what you think unless you're one of the initiated. Many of the divergences are centuries old and show no signs of shifting.

If Rudolf the Black Nosed Reindeere lives on another planet amongst a herd of genetically engineered reindeere who have shiny noses that you could say even glow, then Rudolf will not be allowed to play any reindeere games.

The mods are locked by social stigma.

PeterZ wrote:I wonder if that sort to redesigning the human genome wasn't done after the Final War? Something drastic had to have been done to save humanity from the bio weapons. I would like to think that sort of change happened prior to the Star Lines. If that sort of plug and play redesign was a Star Line feature, finding them with a gene sniffer is easy-peasy.

Generally, you want effects in the days to weeks with a weapon. It’s essentially pointless to go to the effort of producing an agent that won’t have any effect for 20 years. You spent all your effort producing a long term agent, so while you are cackling and twirling your mustache their smallpox derived agent is spreading with an R of 17 and killing or incapacitation everyone who it infects. Including you.

And then, after you are dead they reverse engineer the agent after they walk in and take possession of your labs.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:Is Manticore now going to criminalize being genetically engineered?

Is anyone possessing locked modifications in their genome going to be summarily executed as a Mesan operative?

The Winton Dynasty is going to be in deep, deep shit.

Instead of shooting them out of hand I'll settle for unlocking the modifications for any offspring that the Wintons/Harringtons/other people have in the future. This whole "my genes WILL NOT lose out to my spouses" has always struck me as very wrong.

It also strikes me as a way to ignore the requirement for a Monarch of Manticore to marry a commoner. They are not going to be nearly as tied into the rest of the population as they would be if they know that their genes will win out in the creation of the next generation.

Vince wrote:Given some of the recent posts on gene dominance, it is clear that some of the posters on this forum are unfamiliar how (super) dominant genes work in the fiction of the Honorverse, which is different from (normal) gene dominance in both the real world and the Honorverse.

Gene dominance among modified strains

JohnRoth wrote:Thanks for the reference. And yes, that's exactly what happens in the design I mentioned - there's an extra subphase after sperm meets egg and before any cell divisions where the mods are applied. RFC is leaving the actual mechanism undefined, which is fine. I never thought there was only one way to do it, only that there had to be a mechanism lurking around somewhere that did it.

As a technical side note: there are a couple of mechanisms like that known, although they only apply to single genes. The gene drive mechanism that's currently being tested to wipe out the mosquitoes that spread a number of diseases are another example.

The fundamental issue is definitional - the use of the term "dominant" instead of what we've been using recently, "locked." And I'm going to disagree with RFC - specialist terminology does not change that rapidly. There are all kinds of examples of terms used in technical fields that originally had the common meaning but now don't mean what you think unless you're one of the initiated. Many of the divergences are centuries old and show no signs of shifting.

Interesting, but there are still some questions I have (but not about locked - that has been definitively answered).
First question: Honor says that Sphinx has only a majority of genies; given that the heavy gravity mods are locked, then why not 80 or 90 percent after this amount of time? I would expect that the only people who are not genies would be new arrivals - such as Alison Harrington. Perhaps Honor got that wrong, but her parents should be knowledgeable.
Second question: if a man from Sphinx with one of these "locked" genes marries an Amazon from Torch, then will they be unable to have children; because of conflicts between their built-in locking? Seems as though that could occur even within Sphinx, if the mods were too different.

Thunder Child Actual wrote:

TFLYTSNBN wrote:Is Manticore now going to criminalize being genetically engineered?

Is anyone possessing locked modifications in their genome going to be summarily executed as a Mesan operative?

The Winton Dynasty is going to be in deep, deep shit.

Instead of shooting them out of hand I'll settle for unlocking the modifications for any offspring that the Wintons/Harringtons/other people have in the future. This whole "my genes WILL NOT lose out to my spouses" has always struck me as very wrong.

It also strikes me as a way to ignore the requirement for a Monarch of Manticore to marry a commoner. They are not going to be nearly as tied into the rest of the population as they would be if they know that their genes will win out in the creation of the next generation.

Why would society have any right to unlock the modifications?

Only reasonable exception would be criminal behavior.

Do not recall Wintons committing crimes.

Honor has gone postal a few times, but they were bad. Is killing rapists and mass murderers relly a crime?

JohnRoth wrote:

tlb wrote:The Meyerdhal mods are locked. Period.

Ah, well, so much for normal biology. Given natual production of gametes in humans (Barring intervention by Mesa, the Alignment and all sorts of approved genetic modifications in the Honorverse) the DNA in each cell about to split and become a gamete goes though a little (or a lot) of scrambling the data.

To our current point, the cells that become the gametes (either egg or sperm depending on sex of the source) 1st typicaly go through the process meiosis by which they trade around (inside the cell) varioius pieces from both of the DNA strands in the DNA helix. It's not the same pieces for each cell undergoing meiosis which is why siblings don't get exactly the same genes from each of their parents (and grandparents, great-grandparents etc).
So, you get 50% of your DNA from each parent but NOT 25% from each of your grandparents (and so on for each preceeding generation because some is lost- it didn't come through to your parent( each of them) and not all of what each parent has goes to you.

Locking implies that the sections of an individual's genes that containe the Meyerdhal mods are ALWAYS maintained in what is passed to children of the parent.
That raises question about how that is accomplished. Specifically, are ALL of the genes affected by the Meyerdhal mods on the same coild of the helix and are they somehow all together or is there something (which we have no idea exists) which functions like a layer of sticky tape that holds each segment (in Centimorgan lengths) together on one side of the helix such that none of it can come off and be part of what goes to the other side of the helix?

Of course, for the mod to actualy work the way it is described- passes unmodified to the next generation- you have allow for certain difficulties. Unless BOTH parents have the Meyerdhal mods, approximently 50% of the children of any one parent will have the mod and the other's will not. If both parents have the mod......well you are looking at you are still looking at there being an approximate 25% chance that any given child will NOT get it.
That would be A BAD THING if the mods are essential to living where they intended you to live.
Solution....the Meyerdhal mods have to be placed on BOTH sides of a given person's genome

Of course, they have to have been adjusted to be dominant traits so that even if the modified individual produced children with a non-modified individual the mods would take effect.
BUT.....there is still that sticky (or not sticky enough) problem that a union between a modified and unmodified individual would still run a high % of not contributing the mods to one or more of their children.

So.....how do you make sure that all the mods on one side of the helix make the other side of the helix comform- post impregnation of the egg- to what is nessisary to make any child guaranteed to pass along the Meyerdhal mods?

Possibly by putting the mods all together at the ends of the various chromosomes and then----magic happening here given what we don't know is going on yet----building the missing (and mirror image) matching Centimorgans worth of genetic material as mirror images of the Meyerdhal mods on said chromosome(s). Yeah, it really does have to involve multiple chromosomes given the range of things it appears to affect with Honor. Lots of fiddley little bits interacting with others in different places at different times.

At this point my brain is melting because we really don't know how all this works and too many (or even one in the wrong place) "error" (aka mutation) that screws up any one of the possibly thousands of interconnected & or sequential or if/than things that have to proceed from the fertilization of an egg during the creation and growth of an embryo will kill it or- worse- give you all sorst of birth defects with catastrophic results for the child (if it lives) but you get the idea.

Brigade XO wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:The Meyerdhal mods are locked. Period.

Ah, well, so much for normal biology. Given natual production of gametes in humans (Barring intervention by Mesa, the Alignment and all sorts of approved genetic modifications in the Honorverse) the DNA in each cell about to split and become a gamete goes though a little (or a lot) of scrambling the data.

To our current point, the cells that become the gametes (either egg or sperm depending on sex of the source) 1st typicaly go through the process meiosis by which they trade around (inside the cell) varioius pieces from both of the DNA strands in the DNA helix. It's not the same pieces for each cell undergoing meiosis which is why siblings don't get exactly the same genes from each of their parents (and grandparents, great-grandparents etc).
So, you get 50% of your DNA from each parent but NOT 25% from each of your grandparents (and so on for each preceeding generation because some is lost- it didn't come through to your parent( each of them) and not all of what each parent has goes to you.

Locking implies that the sections of an individual's genes that containe the Meyerdhal mods are ALWAYS maintained in what is passed to children of the parent.
That raises question about how that is accomplished. Specifically, are ALL of the genes affected by the Meyerdhal mods on the same coild of the helix and are they somehow all together or is there something (which we have no idea exists) which functions like a layer of sticky tape that holds each segment (in Centimorgan lengths) together on one side of the helix such that none of it can come off and be part of what goes to the other side of the helix?

Of course, for the mod to actualy work the way it is described- passes unmodified to the next generation- you have allow for certain difficulties. Unless BOTH parents have the Meyerdhal mods, approximently 50% of the children of any one parent will have the mod and the other's will not. If both parents have the mod......well you are looking at you are still looking at there being an approximate 25% chance that any given child will NOT get it.
That would be A BAD THING if the mods are essential to living where they intended you to live.
Solution....the Meyerdhal mods have to be placed on BOTH sides of a given person's genome

Of course, they have to have been adjusted to be dominant traits so that even if the modified individual produced children with a non-modified individual the mods would take effect.
BUT.....there is still that sticky (or not sticky enough) problem that a union between a modified and unmodified individual would still run a high % of not contributing the mods to one or more of their children.

So.....how do you make sure that all the mods on one side of the helix make the other side of the helix comform- post impregnation of the egg- to what is nessisary to make any child guaranteed to pass along the Meyerdhal mods?

Possibly by putting the mods all together at the ends of the various chromosomes and then----magic happening here given what we don't know is going on yet----building the missing (and mirror image) matching Centimorgans worth of genetic material as mirror images of the Meyerdhal mods on said chromosome(s). Yeah, it really does have to involve multiple chromosomes given the range of things it appears to affect with Honor. Lots of fiddley little bits interacting with others in different places at different times.

At this point my brain is melting because we really don't know how all this works and too many (or even one in the wrong place) "error" (aka mutation) that screws up any one of the possibly thousands of interconnected & or sequential or if/than things that have to proceed from the fertilization of an egg during the creation and growth of an embryo will kill it or- worse- give you all sorst of birth defects with catastrophic results for the child (if it lives) but you get the idea.

RFC said, specifically, "And, yes, they have figured out a way for a given bit of genetic code to "overwrite" itself into all of an individual's offspring."

I'm choosing to take the word "overwrite" literally, which means that it works the way I said earlier: some undefined mechanism overwrites the relevant sequences at the only time when they're in one and only one place: the fertilized egg before it begins to divide.

Now, I know how I would do it, and as I've said, it would be blatantly obvious. It would also have made Rube Goldberg happy.

How RFC is envisioning doing it isn't something I know, or even want to speculate on further.