thusia | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

Who: Edward, Wander, anyone
When: Day 40, early afternoon
Where: coming from the 4th floor
What: TRIUMPHANT RETURN

[Look who's back from their nature exploration! Aside from both obviously being worn out and the bandage on Wander's leg, he and Edward seem to otherwise be unharmed.]

[There is a lot of nature stuck to Wander's sword, which he is kind of looking at now.]

Wander: Well, um, that was a good hunt.

Edward: It's too bad we don't have anything to show for it.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Oh, like, um..sci, er, science?

[He remembers Aoko mentioning biology and science.]

[Wait half ghost?]

You are half spirit? I did...not think that possible.

Yep!

And it's usually not. It's kind of a tricky thing to manage, only three fully stabilized exist.

Fully stabilized?

[Nods.] Because of how it works, there is an inherent instability in the DNA. When saying a halfa, a half ghost, is fully stabilized, it's saying that the DNA is stable enough that it doesn't fall apart while retaining the halfa traits.

If we're counting not fully stabilized, then the number goes up to seven.

[what did any of that mean?]

D..NA?

Basically the building blocks of the body. DNA is what decides what you are, what you look like, what gender you are, all of that.

Building blocks. You mean all of that stuff is not decided by gods and fate?

Considering I'd be a pretty pissed god if some other gods kept stealing my people, I doubt gods are deciding that. I'm not even sure if they exist in my world all things considered. And we already have plenty of proof here that our destinies aren't decided since we got multiple timelines and dimensional doubles running around.

There's several worlds that have studied things like genetics and biology extensively, studying how the body works and studying those building blocks. Genes and DNA decide what we are and what we look like. That's why families often look similar. The genes, the DNA, goes from parent to child.

[absentmindedly reaching for his hair. red hair, which neither of his parents had, nor anyone in his village. DNA decided that? Or did the gods give him red hair as a warning to everyone else? a warning that turned out to be... warranted.]

[quietly] Gods can curse you, where I am from. They can curse you from birth. Perhaps it is not the same everywhere.

[Noticing the hair thing.]

... [Taking a moment of looking at him thoughtfully.] No one you know has red hair? Is that why you think so? Or something else?

Edited 2012-04-18 02:13 (UTC)

It is a bad omen.

[he has been believing that a lot more lately]

More like it's a recessive gene.

Red hair is the rarest hair colors. That's because there's dominant genes and recessive genes. Like if your parents have different eye colors, you can't have BOTH eyes. So genes have to work out whose going to show and whose going to just be back up genetics to appear in a later generation. It takes a certain combination for a recessive gene to show up.

Even if it's a gene in your family, with the way redhair is, it could be generations before it shows up again. It's not a bad omen.

[he's really not so sure it's not one.]

[quietly] That was all very confusing.

...well, I could show you on a Punnett Square.

A what square?

A punnett square. It's used to show what sort of chances certain genes have to show in a child.

How does it do that?

Because of the math.

I'll show you! [But first, picking off a few twigs and leaves off your nature'd up self. Then kneeling down on the ground and there's a light blue glow from her finger and oh, hey, there's a bit of a two by two box on the ground made of frost.]

This is a punnett square's form. Two by two. And these? [Holding up the nature bits.] Will be the genes that come from a parent to child. [And putting a leaf and twig to the side and above the punnett square, out of the box.] Outside the box will be what the parents could donate. There's always two parts. You'll see why in a minute. Following so far?

Edited 2012-04-19 03:27 (UTC)

[listening intently, and it seems simple enough at the moment. Though he doesn't see how this is going to lead to an explanation of how hair color and stuff is decided. :|a]

...Yes, I think so.

Now, when parents get together to make a baby, they donate half of these two things they have. So this first square?

[Move the twig from the left and the twig on top to the first square.] That is one combination they could have. Let's say these twigs are...brown eyes. Since these both match up, the kid would have brown eyes.

[Moves the twigs out again and moves down to the square below.] But what if instead both of them 'donating' a twig... [Move the leaf from the side and the twig from the top to the bottom.] It's a twig and a leaf? Let's say the leaf is blue eyes. There's blue and brown eyes in the kid, but he can't have both eyes. So how does that resolve itself?

Um. The child gets the stronger one?

That's right. That's what we call the dominant gene. Something about that trait makes it stronger, so it overpowers the weaker, recessive trait.

So if brown is the dominant trait, even though blue is here, you can't see it because of the dominant trait.

[Moving the twig and leaf back to the original positions.] And of course that holds for this other top square. Since brown is still dominant, it overpowers the recessive blue. [Taking the leaf from the top and the twig from the side for that square.] So these three squares, they all end up with brown eyes since the brown eyes gene is always there and it's the stronger gene. So when does the kid get blue eyes?

[okay his head may be spinning a bit at this point]

Um...I am lost.

Can you say which part that's confusing? It's important to ask questions, it's how you learn.

Ah...I do not understand how one ends up with blue eyes.