Ken Arromdee wrote:
I'd like to point out a scientific mistake I've seen many, many times over.
DNA is a set of instructions for how the body develops. If it's already
developed, changing it won't result in more than a person with the wrong sex
chromosomes and maybe some hormone problems. Someone whose genes were changed
to the opposite sex won't become the opposite sex, for the same reason that
if you lose a leg you won't grow another one even though your DNA codes for
having two legs.
...unless, of course, you combine it with some device that computes
roughly what the body would become based on said DNA and "regenerates"
if the body is ever severely off (for instance, a male body for female
DNA, or a missing leg). Such could, in theory, be done with proteins
generated at the end of the sequence DNA controls; you'd just have to
add the DNA for those proteins, too. (The virus might well have such:
it would make the results of tinkering with DNA emerge much more
rapidly, with obvious applications for scientists like Washu, which
would make it more likely that she would put it in her standard
replication vectors - like this virus.)
I could almost see Washu pitching this, in fact. I'd write a fic about
it, but how could one make it interesting to those who do not already
know cell biology?
WASHU: Not everything in life makes good fiction. Why do you think
nobody writes about a typical day in my lab? ("Typical" meaning "no
Mihoshi".) Series of experiments with varying degrees of sucess are
not, in themselves, adventuresome or all that interesting. Making the
regenerative DNA for my scholarship back in college wouldn't be that
exciting to read about, either. You want to really rock the world like
I can? It's mostly boring, to everyone except the person doing it.
Ah...thank you, Washu-chan.
WASHU: If you really want to thank me, write something where I get
Tenchi some time.
...I'll think about it.
WASHU: *Sure* you will.
Ok, ok!
******
Another boring day, another boring test. Washu loved her work, but even
the greatest genius in the universe (and probably all others, though we
can't know that for the universes we haven't seen) needed a break from
time to time. Still, there was work do be done, and as usual, it fell
to her to clean up Mihoshi's mess, just because Mihoshi made it using
her equipment.
Sighing, she walked over to the cryo-preservation unit, and got Tenchi.
Or rather, the collection of biological tissue that she would have to
reassemble. It was a good thing her computers could automate so many
tasks with minimal programming; Tenchi would be good as new within the
hour, as opposed to the weeks or months it would be if Washu had to do
it by hand.
Ah, the drudgery of normality. Or what passed for it, anyway.
******
There. You "got" Tenchi. ^_^
WASHU: ...forget it. I don't think I want to ask you for a lemon scene
with him.
Well, if you want...
WASHU: <drops a giant lemon on author>