On 4 Sep 2002, David Dyer-Bennet wrote: >David Silberstein <davids at kithrup.com> writes: > >> >> My notion - which I admit might be wrong, but isn't contradicted by >> anything we've seen so far - is that the animal genes that Dragaerans >> have are not active DNA, but are rather markers that the Jenoine used >> for tracking purposes. So for all practical purposes, all Dragaerans >> are the same species, and can produce fertile offspring. > >Except for a few exceptions (Jhereg, and I think Yendi) people can >routinely identify somebodies house from their face. The coding for >that has to be *somewhere*; probably in their DNA. Unless you want to posit some form of Lamarckism or heredity via direct intervention of god (or gods), yeah, I'd say it's coded in the DNA. :-) But my contention is simply that it isn't the animal DNA that is coding that. >Of course, human groups with recognizably distinctive features are >interfertile, so this isn't an argument against *that* part of the >claim. Exactly. To restate my thesis: Each of the Dragaeran Houses has certain genetic traits for certain physical (and possibly mental) characteristics; but in addition, they have unexpressed animal DNA sequences for tracking purposes (population dispersion & genetic drift, etc). Is there a geneticist on the list who might comment on the feasibility of the notion?