Whenever I encounter a story involving science fiction transformation gender-changing, specifically involving changing one's DNA, I have serious trouble suspending my disbelief. I've always had trouble describing why, but I finally figured out how to describe the problem. (The explanation could never be a sound-bite.)
Imagine this situation: there is a DNA defect, causing its possessor to develop weak and abnormal bones, as he grows. Consequently, the adult has scars from tripping and falling, residuals from bones broken and set, and other things. Allan is such a person.
Bob is an ordinary person, without the defect. You introduce the defective DNA into all his cells. Or perhaps even introduce Allan's entire DNA into Bob. You turn him into a twin of Allan, perhaps?
Of course, it's not that simple. The scars and broken bones are formed pretty much at random, so Bob's would probably be different from Allan's. Bob's in a worse position: Allan had his broken bones set, but with DNA, nothing programs the setting of bones -- only the tripping and falling and weak bones that cause their breakage. Hence Bob changes into a cripple because of unset broken bones.
Again, it's not that simple. It's crackpot. The DNA doesn't program the tripping and falling, or the damage caused thereby. Likewise, the DNA doesn't suddenly change the bones from whole to defective, for the same reason. The defective DNA altered the mechanism that developed Allan's bones, perhaps during pubescence.
Now take a young man, and change all his DNA to that of a young woman -- or maybe a little girl or a grandmother. (The DNA doesn't depend on the age.) The DNA that programmed a pubescent girl to grow out breasts isn't going to spontaneously change his breasts to a young woman's breasts. They are distinct acts. Likewise, the DNA that creates a girl won't transform a boy into a girl. (Who knows what would happen? Probably a lot of nasty, unpredictable stuff.)
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my reply
lois mcmaster bujold does best at the situation. Boy has brittle bones and eventually gets them replaced but has clone who was surgically altered to be almost identical...almost.
DNA is not age specific either. If you put the DNA of a young person into an old person that person will not suddenly become young, actually they will most likely die from a sudden onset of cancer to be honest.
elisabeth moon wrote a bit on deaging that was believeable.
I find it much easier to suspend belief in...
I find it much easier to suspend belief in a DNA transformation than a magical one. Although I find both entertaining to read as long as both follow the rules of the author's universe.
DNA replacement therapy may have been science fiction 30 years ago but is medical science today. And I see the day in our future (if we don't blow up this tiny little rock we all live on) that it is used in many forms, including gender change instead of hormone therapy.
As long as the author has a set of rules (That the reader may never see?) that the author adheres to when writing these stories I see no problem suspending disbelief. Take my own Super Soldier (unfinished) story as an example of a DNA transformation story. While I can't get into specifics as that would give away future plot discovery for the readers, the transformation requires specialized equipment (and specific items that I can't go into here). The process is highly experimental and the subject takes several weeks to transform. I actually have a lengthy file on the specific DNA, the retro virus delivery agent, the equipment, etc. all used to make the transformations happen as they do.
The male to female transformation in the story is an unexpected fluke that the doctors and scientists are only theorizing as to how it occurred as the process is only supposed to enhance the subject, (i.e. make a super soldier of of him.) There are side effects to the process that have been discreetly added into the story so that rather than writing they all have such and such issue, the reader will eventually discover these differences as the story progresses. Kat's hair is one of these differences and clues to how she can control it will leak out in the story. Can't say more about that other than there is a scientific explanation behind it.
We the willing, led by the unsure. Have been doing so much with so little for so long,
We are now qualified to do anything with nothing.
dna replacement therapy
at current has a very high chance of becoming or causing cancer so it is only still experimental. Still kinda sciencefiction as to what it can do.
Yes!
I agree with Daphne wholeheartedly. What would happen to the bones of an adult whose DNA was changed to that of the opposite gender? Answer: Nothing. The bones have already grown. The DNA does not say "Grow the bones so that they end up in this configuration." It says "At age A, induce growth like B." If one is well past age A, the bones ask "Any changes today?" and get the answer "Nope."
Now what would happen to the sex glands, I have no idea. I do know that the person would not grow organs of the opposite sex. That train left the station long ago.
None of us have any idea
None of us have any idea what medical science may be able to do in the future.
I do agree that simple DNA replacement can not alter bone structure, and doubtfully alter sexual organs beyond making them sterile, but what of medical nanites, something else that scientists today are working on moving out of the science fiction realm into reality? What about an Alien virus? What are some of the possibilities of what that could do if introduced to a human body either intentionally or by accident?
What about Gamma radiation, that was a big one used a lot in the 50's and 60's for many movies and superheroes and super villains to mutate them into all sorts of various transformations. Yeah this one is even harder to believe but did it stop you from watching the Avengers? X-Men? Captain America? The Hulk?
What kills the disbelief for me is a writer stating in the story that "X" does only this, then later in the story have it do something against that rule.
We the willing, led by the unsure. Have been doing so much with so little for so long,
We are now qualified to do anything with nothing.
Except that there are species
Except that there are species _on this planet_ that completely alter their skeleton during a gender change, as well as internal organs. They're much more primitive than we are (much smaller DNA chains), but they exist.
The biggest problem is that of the genetic expression vs the development of the individual. It's similar to ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. The "clone" wouldn't be a clone, but rather an identical twin. Environmental conditions affect growth of the individual, including teratogens, food, vitamins, and minerals. So the DNA adjustment could end up being close to identical, to being much taller (or shorter) than the donor.
Let's ignore age, because much of this would involve stem cells, which don't really have an 'age' like most cells with their telomeres.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
Exactly!
When talking about clones obvious things such as scars would not be evident on the clone, also depending on childhood illnesses, malnutrition, etc. the clone could be taller and have other dissimilarities in appearance. Fingerprints and retinal patterns would be also different, making the clone appear to be more akin to an identical twin.
That's of course if we are discussing scientific cloning. Now magical cloning is another ball of wax, that would depend on the rules on magic the author created for his/her universe.
We the willing, led by the unsure. Have been doing so much with so little for so long,
We are now qualified to do anything with nothing.
species _on this planet_
There are things like the clown fish that change gender, but that isn't as big of a change as what a caterpillar goes through.
And, to my knowledge, there is no change in the DNA. It's just a matter of activating bits of code and deactivating others.
Fiction often precedes science and fact
If one is leaning toward a more current normal (believable) story rather than F or SF, I don't believe there is an abundance of those type of stories on BCTS. Provided one has an open mind and believes the supposed teachings of Jesus, there is no impossible, except in our mind. Shall we start with the planets revolve around our flat earth? Do you remember no one can possibly survive going faster than a horse? Or Jules Vern reached the moon long before Apollo? There were no nuclear subs for Captain Nemo? No one knew molecules made up everything and they were the smallest particle? Until protons, neutrons, electrons shredded that theory, and then got shredded themselves as even they weren't the smallest.
I find all the F and SF one BCTS fascinating for the most part. There are writers here with more talent than ten of the top NYT Best Selling Authors. However if I was purchasing coffee table books I never intended to read to impress guests? The NYT would be it because "that" book was listed as a best seller. The real readers would be BCTS I spirited down to my dungeon and read by candle light so no one would catch me reading such mind numbing drivel.
Let's return back to the original blog and talk about that DNA sequencing and or replacement. What wasn't mentioned was gene splicing GMO snippets. Single links removed and replaced or even parts of a link removed and replaced.
Our genetic manual holds the instructions for the proteins that make up and power our bodies. But less than 2 percent of our DNA actually codes for them. The rest — 98.5 percent of DNA sequences — is so-called “junk DNA” that scientists long thought useless. If one believes in God (I must) then that 98.5 percent I'm carrying isn't window dressing. It's there for a reason. Who can predict what will happen when we start playing god ourselves and mess with that junk DNA?
If changing boy to girl or girl to boy (by all the ways listed on BCTS) isn't one's forte. Why read the stories? Or possibly skip over that juicy tidbit and enjoy the rest of the story?
As I said many times. Some of the best writers in the world are on BCTS and I've died and went to heaven. They are free, I don't have to read the manuscripts, nor tell any up and coming authors, "Rewrite this puppy and get back to me."
Hugs Daphne, you know I love you girl. You are a great author but sometimes I think you get too close to Bru and Nunnan and they are rubbing off on you. Daddy always told me if I got to close to someone, pretty soon I'd start acting the same way they did. That is why I like to borrow their dresses but keep the association strictly to parties. Short time exposure.
always
Barb
Life is too short to take seriously. Have fun with it while you're here.
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl
What's been pointed out is
What's been pointed out is that the junk DNA is 'junk' by -current construction-. Much of it is leftovers from viral and bacterial infections that ended up altering germ plasm (sperm/ova), but in such a way that it didn't keep the species from surviving. Other bits might have been useful, but to the progenitors of humanity, 250,000,000 years ago. That's a LONG time. Lots of other sections are redundancy, so if one gene is damaged, another overrides the first. It's a huge complicated ball, and it'll probably be a very long time before we know all the bits enough to really do more than basic butchery.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
Closeness
"Hugs Daphne, you know I love you girl." Blush! "You are a great author--" Thank you! "...but sometimes I think you get too close to Bru and Nunnan and they are rubbing off on you." I've always loved pulling out a perfect twist, even before meeting Bru and learning what he stood for. (I think that I wrote "BB: A Boy's Visit" before that.)
Someone (who shall remain nameless) once commented on a story of mine, and asked if Bru and I were having a contest.
-- Daphne Xu
Yes
Yes! That's a bit of a peeve of mine as well. It's something I tried to tackle in Battle for Earth. The protagonist becomes bonded to a symbiotic organism called a K'teth that transforms him. It does this by manipulating his dna and changing him cell by cell.
Have a delightfully devious day,
Stem cells
I've always thought it would require not just the alteration of DNA but a mechanism whereby existing cells are forced back into being stem-cells which then develop in the patterns of the new DNA and all excess getting sloughed off. (Unneeded mass, where doth it go? Flush!) Basically it would need a rather goopy creche pod of some kind to act as life support while the entire biology blorps about plus time for it all to happen. The real trick would be somehow keeping the existing brain and its memory cells plus all the learned association patterns intact to avoid a mind-wipe...
Mush
The rather goopy creche pod is called a chrysalis. Sometimes, the chrysalis is protected by a cocoon.
Yes, that's exactly how metamorphosis works. The insides are turned into mush, then reassembled into a butterfly or moth or dragonfly or whatever.
I have seen some transformation fiction where the protagonist ends up inside an egg. The egg hatches, and out pops a new girl or furry or whatever.
DNA and stuff
There is a lot of misinformation out there, and we all have our favorite pet peeves.
And you are exactly right. You could take a cell sample from a grumpy stubby grizzled fat old man, culture it, and bio print it into a delicate fair maiden. Or an elf. Or a kitty girl. Or anything biologically viable. I'm ignoring the part about creating stem cells and causing them to differentiate into the appropriate tissues, but you get the idea.
In an earlier (and unpublished) SF story, I used a virus to add another pair of chromosomes that were carefully designed from the original twenty-three pairs. It caused the cells to essentially recreate the body from the original 23 the same way that a zygote turns into a baby. Lots of handwavium, but eh, it made for a good story.
As the good doctors Martin pointed out, the DNA that builds the body is quiescent once the body has been built.
But there are lots and lots of errors in science fiction. We even have one of the Big Three using regular rockets to thrust until light speed is reached. I knew that that was wrong way back in junior high when I read it, but the story was still good. Even if that error annoyed me.
EDIT:
The whole bit of modifying an adult organism isn't fiction. Caterpillars do it all the time. That's why I chose to use that method with the above mentioned SF story. Come to think of it, I used it in two stories. Neither have been published.
Adding another nearly there element....
We are actually lab growing human clone tissue at the present time. The work is aimed at growing genetically identical organs for transplants. A side step gets you to include the work done on cleaning up genetic flaws (Tay Sacs etc) which is close to modifying gender. Mature this and you get a set of transplantable female organs. Maybe 50 more years? Not magic, but near future medical science. On the way we should get implantable ovaries first to replace pills, patches, and implants for hormones. So...retired pro football lineman Brock can be pregnant with their second child by his cheerleader wife Debbie in a foreseen future.
BAK 0.25tspgirl
Developmental Paths
Yes, I'm also dissatisfied with stories that seem to assume that if you replace a Y chromosome with an X chromosome, it will turn an adult (or even child) from male to female. To me, this shows a Fox-news level of understanding of biology.
For one thing, anatomical sex determination is a heck of a lot more complicated than X or Y chromosomes; intersex conditions such as CAIS are an example, but (according to Wikipedia, at least), there are even (very rarely) fertile XY females and XX males. Throw into the mix things like XXY and chimeras (people with a mix of XX and XY cells), and it gets even more complicated.
For another, the DNA (and epigenetics) don't contain a blueprint for the finished product. They contain programs for developmental steps, which, if all of them work out the way we assume they're supposed to (DNA doesn't have a "supposed to," it just is), result in a body that more or less conforms to our idea of a "female" or "male" body (and if any don't, you end up with a miscarriage or an intersex individual.) It's the difference between on the one hand having the latitude and longitude for Times Square and heading in the right direction until you get there, and on the other hand, following an extremely detailed set of instructions which, if followed exactly, will put you at Times Square, but if you mess up one step, you end up in the East River, and if you mess up a different one, you end up in a suburb of New Haven, Connecticut.
Converting a more or less grown male or female human body into what we consider a normal body of the "opposite" sex would require a completely different set of developmental steps. So you'd have to have DNA that is not at all like anything in any human being's body, encoding a developmental "program" that you'd have to invent from scratch. Moreover, such a program (if it didn't kill the patient) could turn a body into practically anything. It would only look like what we think of as a typical female (or male) body if you had a very detailed understanding of the body you were trying to create -- and you were very good at implementing it and getting around all the technical difficulties. It might well turn out to be easier to turn someone into a body that looked mostly like a typical female/male body but left out some of the harder things.
In the one story I wrote which involved such a transformation, I imagined that someone had indeed come up with such a "program" and created virus-like things that would take over a person's cells and do all the complicated stuff required to do the transformation. I presumed that this would be an outgrowth of research into ways to get the body to regrow organs and body parts lost due to disease or accident, because human beings don't have "programs" to regrow limbs, either, so you'd need to invent a developmental path for regrowth and implement it somehow. I also assumed that the creators of this "program" would focus on getting the details right that their patients cared about most and do whatever was easiest for the rest. In my story, I assumed that creating ovaries and a uterus was too hard, but having something that bled a little on a regular basis was not.
(One of my readers took issue with this, saying that you couldn't have monthly bleeding without uterus and ovaries, which baffled me. Since it was all just stuff I made up and was and is so far beyond our current capabilities that we have absolutely no idea what would be involved in any of it, why would my assumption be any more implausable than any other?)
Oddly enough, I find stories that use "magic" as an explanation for how a boy gets turned into an anatomical girl (or the other way around) easier to accept. "Magic" is by definition outside of anything we have in the real world, so it doesn't clash with my knowledge of how things are. Even if someday someone really does invent a treatment for turning a boy into a girl or vice versa, it will be so far from anything we know about that it might as well be magic.
And when you come down to it, why does it matter? I don't think anyone reads these stories to learn about real-world techniques for changing their body into a female body (or the other way around), do they? I think we read them so we can imagine being the gender we wish we were, and the details of how we get there aren't all that important. All we ask of the explanation is a bit of pausible hand-waving that helps set up the rest of the story.
Those developmental steps
Those developmental steps _are_ encoded into the DNA and RNA. That's why you can observe behavior, and say "That's a two year old",or "That's a teenager". There's programming for humans to work certain ways at certain developmental points. The programming doesn't really 'switch off' until post-puberty, and even then, there's still activity - women go through menopause while they still have eggs, for example. It's not like they run out and switch off.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
Magic
Yes, I think that's the idea I have about using "magic" vs. apparent scientific explanations like changing one's DNA -- magic is far beyond what we know. Mix the two, such as magically changing one's DNA to change one's sex -- one mustn't say, "No, that's not ordinary DNA, that's magic DNA." Once one introduces DNA in the process, you're talking about DNA as we mean it.
Something similar about Superman. The world might have Superman, so far, okay. But one mustn't have Superman dragging the Empire State Building with tissue paper. The reason is that the world has Superman, not Supertissuepaper. Similarly, Superman might go 500 mph. Superman mustn't go 500 mph to go from Los Angeles to NYC in ten minutes. One should also recognize that if Superman flew to the ground, and stopped in time to catch Miss Distress falling from a skyscraper, she'd go splat on his arms as bad as hitting the ground. (The proper way: match Miss Distress and her velocity midfall, grab her, and decelerate fast enough to stop at the ground.)
I know I've griped about a "north-sound geosynchronous orbit", and an "inverse-square force" that gets stronger the father one gets away from the source.
-- Daphne Xu
Gender change using retro virus may actually be possible.
I have to admit I don't have a PhD in applied medical genetics, only a college major in biology and genetics. I do however read the rare articles in that field.
That's why I believe it may actually be possible to change the gender and other phenotypes of a human to something different.
We are currently able to use modified retro viruses to alter DNA. We do now how to address specific parts of DNA on various chromosomes. Assuming someone has a complete map of the human genom and actually knows what each part does (the first we achived many years ago through the Human Genom project, the second part, well, that's still very much in research) that someone would be able to program a virus exactly in the way necessary to alter the DNA to induce growth of ovaries, uterus and secondary sexual characteristics along with the hormonal changes that would result in.
Just the one 18 year old article about gene therapies - The challenge of gene therapy and DNA delivery
It would very much likely be a slow process taking months and carry yet unforseen risks. Nobody knows how and when the ovaries in an adult human would develop and when they need to connect to an uterus.
Another likely risk would be those new cells being attacked by the human immune system, although again, this can quite possibly be mitigated by introducing an earlier therapy to suppress the immune reaction to those changed cells.
What such a therapy would most likely not change is the skeletal structure of a human body. From my naive understanding, while a very slow change might be possible, it's unlikely and definitely would result in cancer like structural changes, some parts brittle others extremly dense which would without doubt lead to broken bones and unbearable pain.
So I believe changes in soft tissue might be possible in future, bone tissue however I doubt will ever be changed by gene therapies over such large areas. And considering that such research will require volunteers which are more then likely to die a horrible and painful slow death, it's very unlikely it will be done in near future.
I hope that helps somewhat to understand. Please PM me if you have more questions.
Saphira
--
>> There is not one single truth out there. <<
The major issue with a
The major issue with a skeletal reconstruction is that when everything is softened to reform (as in the previously mentioned critters that do it), there's no support left. The animals that do the change either have very similar skeletons, or they're purely water animals, which means that they're supported by the water itself. I wouldn't think that cancer would be any higher of a risk than normal, if they're simply issuing the "Rebuild, but use this different layout" commands.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
Bones
Bones can be modified with constant pressure. That's why bones recede in people with dentures and bone spurs grow when the area is stressed.
Changing the body after the fact
When we can cause changes in the body after it has been constructed, we will be able to cause it to grow new limbs, and repair damage to everything, including aging.
Whether that will happen as a slow process, or more like metamorphosis, is anyone's guess.
handwaving in stories
i look at like I do the comics. Marvel used radiation to kick start a lot of their characters' powers.
does radiation work like that - no. but it's not a big enough deal to make me not want to read the stories
I can live with a little handwaving
DNA Repairs
I have Cystic Fibrosis so I am an avid reader of anything factual. In particular summaries of research put out by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Awhile back I read of advanced research aimed at inserting genes into DNA, replacing the defective genes that cause CF with good genes from the lab. Doing so is completely possible, this is what viruses do. They inject their own DNA into a cell where it takes over the cell's original DNA and hijacks the cell and makes more viruses to take over other cells. Just look at how cancer spreads.
Really, while there are still obstacles to overcome - funding, government interference, testing, the FDA, government interference, etc. - this should be possible within the next 50 years. Ask anyone with the really severe CF, and you'd have a large number of volunteers. Between the possible side effects and the guaranteed premature death from CF, what would you choose? At the time I was born I would have likely died before seeing my age in double digits and dying before I was 18 was a near certainty. Research changed that. But research costs money. Did you know CF gets ZERO government funding? It exists on private funding and grants.
DNA research is an ever-growing field, don't bet against it. It just takes research.
“When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus.” - Turkish Proverb
CF
I had a friend with CF. I wish I could find her. She was a wild girl that lived life fast -- something that I greatly respected about her. I have searched the web for Deanna Darlene Delisle, but have had no hits.
I understand that they successfully inserted a good copy of the CFTR gene into the lining of the lung. Unfortunately, that lining is constantly shed. Later treatments failed because the immune system attacked the virus.
This is yet another syndrome that can be fixed by bio printing, along with some genetic modification of the stem cells.
Sometimes even with the headlong speed at which technology is advancing, it still isn't fast enough.
DNA does change with age
Our DNA does change as we age. If you know enough about it, and I don't, you can tell the approximate age of someone from their DNA. I don't know if this is pertinent to the matter you raised Daphne, but a quick google of 'DNA change with age' yields more information than I can make sense of. I used this fact in my story 'The Fields of Identity have no Monocultures just Endless Varieties of Wild Flowers'.
Regards,
Eolwaen
Eolwaen