Mesan super-baby market

JohnRoth wrote:

DDHvi wrote:We've learned a lot about genetics recently. We should also have the humility to notice that it is much more intricate than we thought.

snip

I've heard of studies that found between 30 and 60 new mutations per generation - most of which are in non-coding regions of the genome that don't appear to do anything.

As far as actual deleterious mutations, the terms you want to find are "mutational load" and "purifying selection." Purifying selection is a technical way of saying that people with high mutational load tend to die young or tend to not attract mates so they don't breed. To put it another way, it's "survival of the fittest," with "low mutational load" translating to "fitter."

The thing to understand her is that it's RFC's universe, and genetics works the way RFC wants it to work for the story he wants it to tell. Recent discoveries have no effect on the story other than to make the science age quicker. Not that that's going to matter, since most of the "genetics" in the story is ideologically based and has only a superficial similarity to how it would work in the real world.

Not that most people could tell the difference.

that don't appear to do anything.

George J. Smith wrote:the speculation in this spread leads me to something I heard about donkeys & horses, the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse being a mule and the offspring of a male horse and female donkey being a Hinny, one combination sometimes produces fertile female offspring the other cannot produce any fertile offspring at all, although I'm not sure which does and which doesn't.

The point is the Malign could engineer males of their A,B&G lines to produce infertile offspring resulting from any encounters with normals, the female A,B&G lines would be engineered to reject the seed of normals so no offspring were generated, after all there are male as well as female sex slaves.

Just a thought.

DDHvi wrote:We've learned a lot about genetics recently. We should also have the humility to notice that it is much more intricate than we thought.

snip

JohnRoth wrote:I've heard of studies that found between 30 and 60 new mutations per generation - most of which are in non-coding regions of the genome that don't appear to do anything.

As far as actual deleterious mutations, the terms you want to find are "mutational load" and "purifying selection." Purifying selection is a technical way of saying that people with high mutational load tend to die young or tend to not attract mates so they don't breed. To put it another way, it's "survival of the fittest," with "low mutational load" translating to "fitter."

The thing to understand her is that it's RFC's universe, and genetics works the way RFC wants it to work for the story he wants it to tell. Recent discoveries have no effect on the story other than to make the science age quicker. Not that that's going to matter, since most of the "genetics" in the story is ideologically based and has only a superficial similarity to how it would work in the real world.

Not that most people could tell the difference.

DDHvi wrote:

that don't appear to do anything.

is accurate, but AFAWK should be added. Recently, research has been published that describes the function of the appendix in digestion. Also, at least some of the "junk" DNA turns out to have regulation functions.

It would be awkward but accurate to add to every theory: both links to the raw facts, and the statement, AFAWK.