Questions tagged [genetics]
For questions about a way to pass on biological information from one generation to the next.
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Would many parents use Designer Baby technology to make their children have Asperger Syndrome?
I have Asperger Syndrome and I was thinking if in a future which parents can use Genetic Engineering to choose the characteristics of their offspring many of them would choose their children to have ...
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Why would a species from the Homo genus have overwhelmingly B negative blood type?
In my story (go to see What evolutionary pressures would lead to Ogres?), there is a massive species from the Homo genus called ogre. They mostly have B negative blood type (I do not mean Rhesus null, ...
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Shortest pregnancy length possible using artificial womb technology [closed]
Let's say that genetic engineering can make a baby be born far less than 8 - 9 months and since the artificial womb is a device it would not have the metabolism limitations that a real womb have so ...
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Genetic Plausibility of All-Male Half Giants and All-Female Witches
So, this problem is kind of a two-in-one; arguably two different issues but very closely related, so I'm posting them as one question.
I'm designing a lineup of fantasy races for a roleplaying setting,...
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What would this character potentially be charged with in this situation? [closed]
In my sci fi short story I'm working on, a company called Generation sometime in the future, develops a viral based treatment for a new kind of cancer that has arisen in young children. Around fifteen ...
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What are some specific body parts that would irreversibly fail over time in a cancer-immune, biologically immortal person?
Let's say that you have a person who's, if certainly not immortal in the general sense, biologically immortal, as enumerated in this question - not only do their telomeres never shorten, they're also-...
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Near-biological immortality and cancer immunity via repurposing telomeres
TL;DR: I have solved aging and cancer with the power of handwaving and genetic science. All rejoice.
Yes, there is a question at the end of this all, but you have to read it for it to make sense.
In ...
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Would it be possible to genetically engineer wings onto humans? [closed]
This is entirely hypothetical, but there is human gene editing equipment. It is hypothetical because the wings would not work, unless they were ultra-light and the wingspan was 60 feet.
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What would a heterozygote advantage against rabies look like?
Some heterozygote advantages in humans are:
People with sickle-cell trait are resistant to malaria, but people with sickle-cell disease tend to die young.
Depending of the source we believe, people ...
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How would a human/floral humanoid offspring look?
I’m trying to figure out what the appearance of a human and a floral humanoid offspring would look like. The floral humanoids have humanlike bodies with petal hair and “unnatural” skin color (which ...
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How much of a genetic bottleneck would one man siring children in multiple generations be?
After reading Ryan North's How to Invent Everything, I thought it might be fun to try to do my own Connecticut Yankee story for NaNoWriMo, but going back an early Stone Age population. I figure on ...
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How to ensure magic-sensitive population remain low? [duplicate]
In my world, China earns its beginning to three major clans: the Huang, the Yan, and the Chi You.
Huang and Yan are normal homo sapiens, but Chi You is a clan of sentient magical reptiles like dragons ...
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Genetic disease that makes thermoregulation voluntary
I wonder if the disease I invented is realistic or a total fiction.
There is a real life genetic disease called congenital central hypoventilation syndrome (or Ondine's curse, if you want). People ...
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A genetic disorder that makes people unable to feel itch
I know that congenital insensitivity to pain exists and is autosomal recessive. There is a village in Sweden where 40 cases of this rare genetic disease were reported.
I am writing a story with a ...
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Heterozygote advantage against influenza/flu
Some heterozygote advantages in humans are:
People with sickle-cell trait are resistant to malaria, but people with sickle-cell disease tend to die young.
Depending of the source we believe, people ...
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Would digitigrade legs be superior in low gravity for a bipedal organism?
all,
I was reading another post on this forum about humans with digitigrade legs, mostly noting that they were relatively inefficient due to constant exertion to remain standing. On a planet with ...
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How can an animal get "upgrades" at different stages of its life?
I want an animal that gets harder to kill as it grows older, biologically immortal.
Every time the animal passes different stages of its potentially endless life, it can choose to "upgrade" ...
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How would a small society of wizard geneticists spread magic powers through a magicless earth best?
A society of wizards has a magical gene they want to spread on an otherwise magicless earth.
The magic gene is limited in total potency to any effects that you could produce with a million dollars. ...
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Could a genetically modified plant become a house?
I was checking out art made by Hyrotrioskjan on Deviantart and found his Nea project. One art piece features large genetically modified plants that are able to essentially house a community. These ...
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What would it take to have a 100% redhead population?
Redheaded-ness is a recessive trait. Obviously a society could just kill every baby that comes out with a different hair color, but is there any passive way for a human ethnic group to be 100% ginger?
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How can the wealthy prevent the illegal propagation of their genetic code?
The human genome has been completely mastered and understood by the end of this century, which has led to a service industry revolving around genetic codes. Gene editing to prevent diseases are now ...
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Re Zero ; kill all and start over - what genes are associated with non violence
Anyone with a perfectionism mania would understand the urge to delete and destroy everything for the smallest mistake, the most insignificant impurities are disgusting and craze inducing from the ...
user86663
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Making egg laying humans [duplicate]
What are the minimal changes to human biology that a biological engineer can make to create humans that successfully reproduce via egg-laying? Assume that he wants to preserve as much of the ...
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Can any monosaccharide be used as a XNA backbone?
I'm not a chemist—I'm an artist and I occasionally write. But I'm starting to get more and more interested in xeno/speculative biology. When it comes to these things I'm pretty much just looking at ...
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How long would it take an isolated population to develop into its own ethnicity?
Okay, so I had this idea that there is a group of refugees (a majority of them civilian families) taking cover from an invading force, vanishing into a mountainous region that serves as a natural ...
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What are some ways I can ensure that only a small amount of people actively try to pursue divination in a pre-modern society?
I'm trying to make a story where the amount of people that are able to see the future range from 1-0.1% (i.e. 1 in 100 to 1 in 1000). The problem I'm having is that I'm trying to have my cake and eat ...
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What kind of genetic problems would arise after three, five and ten generations of inbreeding? [duplicate]
In this case I'm assuming that the family has been inbreeding to a level of 2 or closer for a certain amount of generations. Given this what would be the likely issues that would arise after:
Two ...
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How would "Amazon" (a female only subspecies) genetics work?
The traditional Amazon tribe in mythology is a society of only women that reproduces by capturing outside men. Suppose that the Amazons were an actual sub-population/subspecies of humans that, as the ...
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How would a Low Fantasy Iron Age setting be effected if Inbreeding and Divination were directly connected? [closed]
I'm trying to make a world with a very low fantasy setting in it. The world itself is currently at levels or similar to that of the Classical Civilizations during the later parts of the Iron Age i.e. ...
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How long would it take for inbreeding issues to arise for a family that practiced inbreeding?
The magic in my setting arises from inbreeding. However to gain the powers a person must be in-bred. How long would it take before such problems arise from inbreeding if the people continued this ...
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Superpowers from a Blood Transfusion
Okay, in a lot of pop culture, blood transfusions can give you superpowers. In Metroid, Samus Aran was given Chozo blood to enhance her strength so that she can survive Zebes' gravity. Zebes having a ...
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How could civilization deal with a prion pandemic? [closed]
Prions are misfolded proteins that cause neurodegenerative diseases. They are smaller than viruses and they are the smallest known infectous pathogen. Somehow they could reproduce on their own and the ...
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How can the human body be optimized, yet still be mostly human?
I've been curious for a while now about how much room we have left for evolution as a species, or at the very least, as a people, due to one of my projects involving genetically-engineered superhuman ...
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A genetic disorder that makes people look like an elephant and a whale
I want to know if the genetic syndrome I invented is logical or just a total fiction.
There are seven symptoms:
Gigantism;
Truncal obesity;
Alopecia universalis (the complete absence of hair all over ...
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A genetic disorder that would be the opposite of achondroplasia
Achondroplasia is a form of dwarfism that is characterized by short limbs, macrocephaly, and normal-sized abdomen, torso, and neck.
Could there be a form of gigantism that is characterized by long ...
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Human-Alien Hybrid Babies (18+) [closed]
Okay, I have stories with interspecies sex, complete with viable offspring. What kind of gene editing would be needed for that to even work, and how would the resulting child's genes be expressed? And ...
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How different can an alien be from us if it is possible for us to have sex and procreate?
Aliens have arrived to Earth from the depths of space, and thankfully they are peaceful and only want to learn about us and interact with us.
Despite some initial trepidation, first contact goes well ...
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Could cats sustain themselves in caves?
An odd question, yes, but a question I am asking anyway. I have a group of feral cats that lives in a cave system. They've lived down here for generations, and survival of the fittest weeded out the ...
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Plausibility of species with multi-colored skin
I am creating an intelligent humanoid species for DnD. I want them to have skin that has multiple colors. The colors would form patterns on the skin that would be random in each individual or could be ...
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What would determine the rate that a hereditary condition reveals itself after years of dormancy?
Long ago, an Eldritch deity was summoned to the city of Innsmouth within a ritual circle, where it was killed and consumed by the population. Devouring the flesh of the deity increased the mana supply ...
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Zodiac eugenics
Imagine a world slightly more developed then ours. For example internal combustion engines are becoming obsolete, they have fuel cells and electric cars. They also started using genetic engineering to ...
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Why can’t gene stealing parasites transform their hosts into magic users?
In my modern-day setting, people who use magic are called Fjǫlkunnigr, who gain four different powers based on core aspects of their personality called Megin. There are only three ways for someone to ...
user48508
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Linking genetic sex to a set of climate adaptations
My world is fairly chaotic, with the same 2/3 of it being completely broken up and remade in chunks such that the whole 2/3 is always completely different than it was ten years ago.
So once species ...
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Founder’s effect causing the majority of people in a post-apocalyptic world to become colorblind?
So, in my world (or more rather the region in which my story takes place) when the nuclear war happened the majority of people survived in small, survivalist compounds, remote wilderness shelters, and ...
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Could polygamous family survive half siblings incest?
I'm worbuilding a situation about a polygamous family, consisting of a father, his several wives and their many children. They are cut off from their tribe, by highland rebellion which closed the only ...
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Genetic trait success tracking--is it possible?
Elf genetics works differently than the standard Darwinian model. Rather than success being determined by the gene-holder surviving and reproducing, genes are "tagged" with success levels at ...
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hypothetical population management scenario with a canind species with 1 males per 100 females
in this world, it's a number of small communities with a postindustrial level of technology where the male minority rules over the female majority with only one male born per a 100 females, with males ...
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Gene modification, does it give certainty or chances?
I don't believe this question is suited for Biology.SE, Medicine.SE, or any other stack, since it involves a real mechanism which is not applied in real life. And not every question has to be about ...
user76853
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How can enchancing a soldiers abilities decrease their life expectancy?
Griffith, a warlord from the ancient world, leads a group of mercenaries called "The band of the Hawk". They have achieved many victories and ultimately desire to build a kingdom of their own. ...
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Can an all-female species thrive to become divergent, despite their generic heritage from their mother?
In one of my stories, there's an alien species that are all female and are able to conceive through pathogenesis but I know this generically creates and an otherwise natural-born clone of the mother ...
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