Questions tagged [genetics]
For questions about a way to pass on biological information from one generation to the next.
354 questions
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What would cause species only distantly related and with vast morphological differences to still be able to interbreed?
In my books' universe, there are twelve sapient races, counting humans. They are all descended from a single species that was effectively identical to modern humans, but they have each adapted to the ...
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What gene could have a mutation that would cause this syndrome characterized by hyperempathy, liver disease, squeaky voice, and sumo-like physique?
My original character (OC) named Claudia Walsh Kondo is a Mexican woman of Irish (paternal grandfather), Sephardi Jewish (paternal grandmother), Yamato (maternal grandfather), and Ryukyuan (maternal ...
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Compacting biological traits arising from emergent biological mechanisms into singular artificial genes [closed]
I have scientists attempting to experiment with humans by tampering with sexual attraction for lore reasons. Sexual attraction comes from complex biological mechanisms. They wish to 'simplify' this ...
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Can an exponentially growing population perform eugenics and selective breeding at short time scales?
I have the Propagation Hivemind, an all-female human hivemind. She has a superpower called the Dao of Propagation. Basically, it allows her to have children really quickly. When she(the hive members) ...
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Long term viability of a human population with super healing that causes female to male sequential hermaphrotism [closed]
This question starts with a conversation I had with friends about the implications of super healing ability of Marvel comics characters like Wolverine, Deadpool, Hulk, and more. How would a person ...
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Producing A Chosen One Via Eugenics: Is It Possible?
Also Known As: The Ambrosius Problem
Lore if wanted: Long ago, the 12 most powerful mages in the world (the Founders), after gaining a pyrrhic victory against the Eldritch King, performed a ritual to ...
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How can a society have a group of people who are sick (from radiation?) while others are kept healthy?
I'm trying to plan out a post-apocalyptic novel that takes place on earth centuries or thousands of years after the apocalypse. The circumstances surrounding the apocalypse are vague as society has ...
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Pathogenic Hive-Intelligence When Critical Mass is Reached
Could there be a virus or amoeba or protist or bacteria (or fungal but that is over-used in pop culture) that infects humans (and possibly other lifeforms) that by itself is not sentient but as they ...
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Will it be possible to prevent cancer by introducing ECC on genome?
Could it be possible to drastically improve DNA repair capabilities by introducing error-correcting codes into the human genome? Would it be feasible to reduce the probability of cancer while slightly ...
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observable consequences of perfect healing
What are the Consequences of Perfect Healing?
Or stated another way, what short-to-mid term observable consequences would there be after altering a human being to be in a perfect state of health, ...
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A Better Genetic Polymer?
This is a long one. (TLDR at the bottom)
The prospect of alternative genetic polymers has attracted the interest of people for almost as long as we have known about DNA. Indeed, many alternative ...
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Effects of radioactivity several generations after exposure
Imagine this scenario:
A big nuclear disaster occurs and local population is exposed to a big amount of radiations. Of course, many die, but those who survive emigrate away from the radioactive area, ...
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How would sex chromosome inheritance work in a tetraploid trioecious species with the ZW sex determination system?
I imagined a trioecious angiosperm species descended from common cocoa trees (Theobroma cacao). Trioecious = three sexes (male, female, and simultaneous hermaphrodite).
They use the ZW sex-...
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How much would mtDNA testing help to track down matrilineal descendants of a 2000-year old immortal person?
I'm writing a story which is intended to be mostly realistic and historically accurate, but with one character who is biologically immortal. She is born in a Pictish/Caeldonian/Celtic village in ...
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What's the minimum amount of people required to create a growing population? [duplicate]
I'd like to know how many people it would take to begin a genetically stable civilization. I don't need/don't care about the infrastructure aspect, only the genetics.
Scenario-wise let's assume there ...
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Can 'prions' help me avoid a genetic engineering temporal paradox?
On the world of Ruquelis, the horrific practise of cannibalism stands on three legs, however, this question is concerned only with Leg #1: Genetics.
In How to have 'easy' sexual morphs in ...
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How large of an initial population would it take for these new traits to average out into the standard population of the world?
Let's say, many years ago, hybrids between humans and other mammalians were created and introduced into the world for various purposes. They have the same cognitive abilities as the other humans, and ...
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Can an ability enhancer be passed down to your children?
If a person with an ability gains an ability enhancer and has children with their own abilities, would those children be more powerful/ have more range than a child born before their parent gained the ...
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How fast could a single person introduce gene to human gene pool?
Okay so, in my superhero setting, the way humanity gets superpowers is due to a single mutation. People rarely had superpowers before due to the Dragon gene, but it was always a recessive trait and ...
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How should a time traveler be careful if they decide to stay and make a family in the past?
In a world where time travel in the past is possible but deletes the current future/ present, there is a person named Sarah who does not worry about the ripple effects her actions might create. Sarah ...
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Would a genetically-inserted “memory” be present in all neurons? Or just specific neurons?
So a hypothetical concept I’ve been playing with lately involves the “RNA memory transfer/storage” hypothesis, recently notably demonstrated in slugs a few years back which made a few headlines. The ...
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Could this hypothetical molecule “read” gene code, to allow universal epigenetics?
Here’s the idea: I want to create a biological info-storing material, probably much like RNA, that—like noncoding RNA does—is able to mediate and enact epigenetic changes to the genetic code/material ...
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Could a species with multiple types of genetic material, like a “universal donor”, reasonably naturally exist?
As of late I’ve been developing a concept for a species able to transmit traits through genetic information, basically putting that information into a “host” organism to enact some sort of epigenetic ...
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What is a plausible sex determination system with males, females and multiple hermaphroditic sexes?
EDIT: I unexpectedly had a possible solution to this come to me, and posted it as answer here. Please look it up and give feedback on it.
I'm trying to come up with a plausible sex determination ...
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Can migration be planted into an animal's instincts by humans
So animals will migrate for many different reasons and I wondered if humans could take a species (example:rabbits) that doesn't migrate, and somehow make it develop a yearly migration pattern without ...
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How long will it take for a "mutation" to pass to all the human population?
(Note: I am not yet sure about the population numbers involved here, but if it is a very crucial aspect of the answer, somewhere between 1 million to 100 million at the start is almost certainly ...
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How can I determine gene expression in cases of multiple co-dominant genes? [closed]
On a planet far, far away, there exists a human species with many appearances and abilities. There is a form of energy that flows through air, water, earth and plants (but not humans or animals) which ...
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How would I go about establishing phenotype in the case of co-dominance where mixed phenotype is not an option? [closed]
I am trying to work out genetics for a race that has three types of healers. Having any healing ability is dependent on having the healer gene. What type of healer you are is determined by a ...
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Could gene therapy become the new plastic surgery?
In an EXTREMELY near future (the story is set in June 2028 of the Gregorian calendar), there are some people that use the gene therapy because they want to change their physical appearance.
For ...
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Would there be any side-effects of modded humans breeding with vanilla humans
Context
I plan on creating a world with two human populations, one that would have their respiratory and blood systems genetically modified (suited to be more resillient against oxygen poisoning ...
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Transgenic Peach DNA Splicing
It is possible to put a tiny amount of Human DNA in a plant:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-story-of-how-an-artist-created-a-genetic-hybrid-of-himself-and-a-petunia-25148544/
https:/...
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What genetic enhancements would maximise “luck” in humans? [closed]
In this Sci-if project of mine, bioengineering is now a highly advanced science, nay an art form, and humans are able to enhance their biology using injections of nanomachines which alter their genes. ...
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Genetics of a human-animal hybrid
It’s the age of genetic engineering, and Scientists, in league with shady corporations, have created a group of human-animal hybrids, hereafter referred to as Metamorphs.
Metamorphs are designed as ...
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Would humans on disparate planets with little to no contact with one another continue to evolve along different lines?
Would humans on disparate planets with little to no contact with one another continue to evolve along different lines?
In this universe, humans left Earth a hundred thousand years before. Or if it ...
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Are artificial genes discernible from natural ones?
In a sci-fi project, bioengineering is now a fashionable and profitable industry. A couple of bioengineers decide to play silly buggers with the exobiologists downstairs by cobbling together an ...
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How many generations could a small group go without suffering the effects of inbreeding
With a group of twelve human couples stranded on a island, how many generations could they go before becoming infertile due to inbreeding?
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Would a brain transplant suffer immunorejection if the new body was cloned from the original?
So, having rejected mind uploading in their quest for immortality, the people of my worldbuilding project now seek to develop brain transplanting.
The main problem is immunorejection; if you simply ...
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Alt. Biochemistry - Which of these is a suitable alternative/mirror to DNA?
This question is tied to the “Glass Trees” question I asked earlier which everyone seemed to like. Since y’all had such good opinions on that, I figured I’d bring this particular quandary to y’all in ...
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What would the technical problems be of mass genetic editing? Keidran Animal-Human Hybrids
The Setting
I hear you, I'll make this brief. It's been almost 30 years since the Aurea slow cargo ship arrived at Ilus. When they launched the Aurea, almost a century ago, they had the technology to ...
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In a righty-dominated society, how can authorities prevent a right-handed child from being born to two lefty parents?
In this society, superstitions regarding right- and left-handed people are accepted as fact. (I'm going to be politically incorrect and call them "righties" and "lefties" ...
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Is complete melanism possible in humans?
One of my characters has a genetic disease called "Complete Melanism". Her eyes, her skin, her hair, and her internal organs are all black. Like a famous Indonesian breed of chicken.
The ...
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How could a human develop magenta irises?
I'm writing a character and they have bright magenta Irises.
How could I explain the reason why they have that feature?
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Does it make biological sense for primates to come in every possible hair, skin, and eye color? [closed]
There are a lot of Japanese shows and games where people have many different hair colors and eye colors. There are even cartoons and games where people come in every skin color in the rainbow and ...
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How to have 'easy' sexual morphs in individuals with two identical sex chromosomes in species with XY or ZW sex determination?
Humans and many mammals have an XY sex determination system. This means that the presence of a Y chromosome makes an individual male, while having 2 X chomosomes (and lacking a Y chomosome) makes an ...
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Genetically variable cells that through natural selection achieves evolution in a single individual
I posted a question some time ago about how could genetic engineering design people that could adapt to changing conditions beyond what simple acclimatization or activation/deactivation of genes in a ...
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How could a species have two sex-determination systems?
I imagined a tetraploid species of teleost. This species has both XY and ZW sex-determination systems. I call this strange thing the VYW sex-determination system.
Genetic females have three V ...
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Do we have predictive knowledge of gene editing outcomes for heretofore unseen traits?
We can know what genes affect what outcomes by following the trail backwards, but can we predictively know what changes to what genes would result in completely different and previously unseen ...
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Is it possible to breed extremely peaceful humans?
There is a dictatrix (female dictator) who is a well-intentioned extremist. She wants to make humans as peaceful as capybaras by only permitting humans who are empaths/sympaths to reproduce, humans ...
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If a hypothetical person was extremely sensitive to consuming sugar, would that imply that their glycome was worthy of study? [duplicate]
For my sci-fi notes, I’m truly to figure out if the glycome of an alien allergic or intolerant to sugar would have a glycome worthy of study, that would be different. I’ve been researching all day but ...
Max
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Is there an Evolutionary advantage for 10% of my mammalian species from the Homo genus to have Von Willebrand blood-clotting disease?
In my world, there is a species of human called Homo hematophagus (blood eating human).
Traditionally, these vampires are a cannibalistic race: In war they often drank the blood from their rivals' ...
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