David Silberstein <davids at kithrup.com> writes: > 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. Maybe. It's certainly (by definition) part of the house-specific DNA, anyway. > >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? I am not a geneticist, but *huge* tracts of human DNA are not generally expressed, so any sort of "marker" could easily be carried in there for future reference. -- David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b at dd-b.net / New TMDA anti-spam in test John Dyer-Bennet 1915-2002 Memorial Site http://john.dyer-bennet.net Book log: http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/Ouroboros/booknotes/ New Dragaera mailing lists, see http://dragaera.info