Thursday 24 July 2008

genetics



HOW DO YOU DO…
genetics



Why am I so rubbish?
How do I make dinosaurs?
I’m 98% chimp!




I ain’t got DNAs
Every odd bod has contained within their flexible flesh and brittle bones 35,000 genes, per body cell. And 10 – 100 trillion cells in the human body. But throw me a bucket that’s a lot of information. Means even for the most redundant of entities roaming the planet there’s a deplorable amount of backstage work going on to get Monsieur Twatface to the Jobcentre so he can afford to sit at home staring at two million pixels fighting not to be Jeremy Kyle’s self-righteous gob.

But I hear you not ask, what’s in our genes? Well, largely nothing apparently; 90% is what genetists’ call junk DNA. We got so much crap in our bodies if our bodies were the U.K, we could feasibly survive on Guernsey.



Chimpansapien
We evolved, but how? Adam and Eve and a big ol’ God? No MYH16.
MYH16 is a funny fucker. This gene is purported to be the reason for Homo-erectus (modern man). This MYH16 somehow got deleted a couple of million years ago. It gave us smaller muscles and subsequently may have removed evolutionary constraints on our brain size. Leaving our homo to feel a little self-conscious and to feel a little self-consciousness.

A stupid fact is; 75,000 years ago our genes could have got blipped out of existence. The Tahoma volcano brought the human population to within 1,000 mating couples. But with much gusto and a lot of fucking we survived.



The Offspring’s winter
So your dads a club-footed drunk bald rapist with an unhealthy obsession for heroin and right wing politics. Whereas your mum spends her evenings penetrating her genitals with oversized, overused dog toys waiting for the reluctant flea bitten Rockweiller to fetch. Watching the whole debacle your considering your genetics aren’t going to be the linch pin in that search for a cancer cure. More so, you think you’re the likely catalyst for laws enacting mandatory abortions for hideously pudding headed families.

But how much of you are you?
Height, weight, sex, skin, etc are mapped out by which parent has the dominate gene, that’s why there are less short, ginger, blue eyed, colour blind, Inuit’s around nowadays, they, like their land, are recessive.

If you find you’re a divvy that checks the doors twenty times before he leaves the house and has to have everything perfectly positioned like you live in some idiosymmetric feng shui mental dystopia, OCD is a genetic illness.

“I’m 100% fag, yay I’m gay ok, and it’s in my genes?” It was the great, I was made this way, so screw you bigot phrase. Alas sexual orientation cannot possibly be inherited in the direct way eye color is. Consensus is that homosexuality is attributable to a combination of factors. “Hey don’t oppress me, I’m queer, it’s what psychological, social, and biological factors made me!”



Genghis Carnal
This guy’s life is beyond amazing, from leader at 12, killing his half brother, he and his Mongol army invaded most of Asia. They were and still are considered the bravest, most successful and ingenious fighters. Beyond that, it appears that Casanova Khan left a mark on more than history. 1 in 12 men in Asia--and therefore 1 in 200 men worldwide--carry a form of the Y chromosome that originated in Mongolia nearly 1,000 years ago. Researchers suggest that Genghis Khan himself had this particular version of the Y. The trooper.


Mutations
DNA ain’t perfect, when it replicates it occasionally makes errors or mutations.

“What is that hanging pustule?”

“Oh that’s my wobbly freak thing. Everyone’s got a thing. What you got?”

“Just my twin’s parasitic head drooling with dilated spasticated eyes slowly leeching my lifeblood and any chance of a serious relationship. He’s got Tourette’s you see, every time I get close to someone, he gargles, ‘Where’s my body mummy?’ That’s it, intimacy caput. How are you with a saw?

“Shit! I’ve got twig fingers.”

Hairy ladies, webbed feet people, half man half tree, catdogs, see through skin boy, and Boris Johnson all get undue attention because of a perceived ridiculous appearance. Genetics have just given them peculiar cards. They could someday, be what we will all become. So lets collectively cross our fingers and hope the hell not.



Jurassic park!
So when are we gonna get those amber things with that fly inside and make a proper good zoo?

Sadly not for a longtime or ever. Boring things like the lack of full DNA structures, or that dinosaurs couldn’t handle our environment n they wouldn’t like the food we gave em, right through to diseases they could get if exposed to our apparently dirty diseased selves. There’s plenty of scientists queuing up to curb-stamp our cozened craniums on this one. Bastards



Genetically Bodifyied
We’ve reached the point where we’re designing our babies. That quite beautiful potential for a million different children, due to the random selection of genes in each fertilized egg, has been edited by parents who simply prefer to pick and choose life in favour of the latest dishwater dull celebrity fad they’re into.

Enlarged, resistant, chemically and biologically, modified, swollen and optimised animals and vegetables. You might like that, you might. The sad thing is that half the time you don’t even know your eating hormone enhanced cocks.

Medical cures. Who can’t like those? Everyone hates cancer. Imagine being cancer, everyone and everything hating you. If it weren’t so powerful it’d be a depressive nervous wreak. Genetics helps find cures. Maybe they take the odd baby spine. If you’ve got cancer you’d probably be at the abortion clinic getting those bad choices out of the bins. Ploughing your weak fingers to scrape out some stem cells for Dr Disease. I wouldn’t stop you if that’s how it all works which I don’t think it does.

If you’re the type of person who inspects his faeces. Three companies are now offering extensive DNA read-outs directly to the public. They offer the chance to pay a chunk of money to find out if you’re likely to get elephantitus and whether your ancestors were equally as wasteful with money, manor house in-breds.




Cloning, Cloning, Cloning, Cloning, ningloC
South Korea the darlings of the Jones’ worst nightmare have produced the first dog clones. But this band of brothers isn’t for Mr Choi’s dinner plate. No, these regularities are for ironically detecting things that make us humans feel different, drugs. Snuppy the sniffer joins an unhappy host of other cloned animals including Dolly the sheep, CC the cat and Ralph the rat.

These animals have less chance of survival than normal cats, dogs and sheep. Even so, I bet it felt a bit good being an A-List sheep.



A E I O U Robot
Asmio is our bestest best robot at the moment. It looks like a backpacking astronaut, don’t even talk. What’s all that about?

And what the hell is Robosapien. It meanders ineptly in a finite simulation of a constipated pensioner; it should be on an American football team’s reject bench whisking Gatorade with those hands. His limited dialogue consists of belching and gorilla warbles. This is "The robot that thinks it's a human!" He’s not even as useful as a cup holder. Robosapien crushes your cup. Everything this thing does has to be pressed by a dejected adolescent.

These two aren’t the ones I want. No one should want these, they’re expensive fraudsters. Robots shouldn’t have remote controls and need a technician every two nanoseconds, my robots, “are alive, Stephanie.”

The technological singularity intends to solve this for everyone, well kind of. Imagine Asmios great, great grandchild, Miasmo. Miasmo’s brainy. It’s the equivalent of an amphetamine addled Jeremy Paxman brain incased in carbon fibre. With that power and intelligence he could theoretically build an improved version of himself. That one builds another super version and ten generations later the robots themselves have to design new names to replace begger-mega-stupendee-owso while we have become the best polishers in the galaxy.

This prediction has a lot of people in a flutter. Ok step back, right you know building robots that make better and better robots unrestricted by our meddling psyches is a leap of misunderstanding. We humans historically fuck with anything and everything until it’s redundant or shit and redundant. Simply, It won’t work because we’re a part of it.



Eugenics
In the 1970’s geneticists were a bit sad. Not finding out much gets those borderline asberger’s types a tad strung out. Angry at their own inventive incapabilities they created the genetic determinist theory. That genes use our bodies as machines to survive and replicate themselves, themselves! Human’s are mere vessels for DNA to continue.

Your cells choose and edit which DNA it uses dependant on environmental forces acting on it. To the extent your own emotions are just rational strategies for coping, orchestrated by our own genes. "All emotions removed. Man reborn as Cyberman, perish under maximum deletion. Delete, delete, delete, DELETE!"

Upside, shiny exterior.



I hate you but I love you, but I HATE YOU.

Fruit flies have helped create some of the biggest leaps in curing diseases. About 60% of known human disease genes have a match in fruit flies.

I despise them. They breed uncontrollably, you kill them but they just get up and make a new band of bumbling fools, they can’t fly, they flap around with absolutely nothing better to do than kill any sense of calm. That’s in their DNA and…. And Fruit flies get 'drunk,' just like humans. “When exposed to large amounts of alcohol, (our alcohol) and may in future help to explain why some people are genetically predisposed to alcohol abuse.” I’ll save you the research, fruit flies. “Humans and fruit flies respond to alcohol in a very similar way at the gene level.” In that case I hope they get drunk and fuck a wasp.



Stick, wood, fire, think of those carbon emissions.
Our cave painting “ug ugg” cousins Neanderthal’s DNA is 99.5% percent identical to us. (To put this into context, chimpanzee DNA is 98.77% identical to us) It’s all a bit too close. That whole superiority you get looking at those museum timelines and seeing chimps in a zoo is demolished. You’re now paranoid they might know more about the zoo than you do, escape and throw faeces at you in your own living room, while your eating a banana split watching Planet of the Apes.



Killer genes
Yeah I bet you thought your genes wank in you. “Ohhh i'm so bloody happy I’m here, ooohhh this is bbb bbbb bbbbbbiioologeeeeee! Nope some genes want you dead. Yes there are genes in you that are trying to kill you. Shutting off various reproductive processes so you get older faster and die younger. They release viruses infecting cells. Saboteurs they are, you can’t trust none of them. Tell me their names. No. Scab not I.



Immortal genes
You read right. Because DNA separates asymmetrically. These enduring rapscallions, (they are rapscallions) split so that they maintain the same set template, passed on from Mother to daughter to grandson to… well, they’re immortal. These Immortal genes aren’t your saviour, more like your disorder, your cancer or your fat blushing frog of a face.



Ethnic
Orientals with squinty eyes, Africans with brown skin, Europeans with blonde hair. The deal with variables in race came from mutated genes that gave the finest adaptation for an environment most prominent within that gene pool, while those less suitable will eventually die out, French Canadians.



So who am I?
Our genes are everything to us. But everyone doesn’t and realistically can’t have a clue just what their DNA is, will and can do.

Flip a coin?

Heads
, don’t care.

Tails, lackluster geneticist.

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