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Our bodies are formed from between 50 and 100 trillion cells. Each cell contains genetic instructions stored as DNA. A full set of instructions is stored in every cell, but different cells use different parts of it. A muscle cell uses the part of the DNA for muscles, whereas a nerve cell uses DNA that specifies the nervous system. Each very long DNA molecule is tightly wound and packaged as a chromosome. Humans have two sets of 23 chromosomes in every cell, one set inherited from each parent. The DNA molecule is made up of genes. Each gene guides the production of one particular component of an organism.
Genes give you your eye colour, your face shape and the things that make you look unique. But genes don't make you who you are. Identiccal twins have the same genes. But no twin considers themselves a carbon copy of the other. They are individuals who are shaped by their own likes and dislikes. Each gene is made of building blocks labelled A, T, G or C. Any mixup here can cause a mutation. If the mutation happens on the gene that controls muscle growth, then you get an extraordinarily strong person like Freedom Smith. He inherited his mutant gene from his great great great grandfather Hercules Smith. Why didn't all his ancestors and relatives get the mutant gene as well?
Because a child inherits two copies of each gene: one from the mother and one from the father. So if only one is the mutant Hercules gene, the other normal one will take over. A person who inherits one mutant copy and one normal copy of a gene is a 'carrier' of the mutation. They have a fifty-fifty chance of passing the mutation along to each of their children. This is the reason why the Hercules gene only appears once in a while. A Hercules gene could be produced by making a gene that blocks the protein that limits muscle growth. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore created mighty mice by doing this. Many scientists believe this discovery could eventually lead to drugs for treating people with muscular dystrophy and other muscle-destroying conditions.
Weird science facts. Reptiles can re-grow a tail or limb. If we could find the gene that allows regrowth we could splice it into humans and we could regrow lost limbs, or grow spare hearts, lungs or livers in case we got sick. More weird science. Human DNA contains lots of spare genes that don't seem to do anything. Some scientists think that this junk DNA might contain information for making wings or gills or tails. If it could be activated in some way, would we be able to become like the mythical creatures of the past, able to fly with wings or able to live under water like mermaids? Even weirder science. If a child could be cloned, then an identical twin could be made of the original child and kept frozen in case that original child needed a transplant.
Exceptionally weird science. If the original child dies at an early age, the frozen twin could be thawed, and the parent would have the identical child to raise again. But what if you found out you were not an original but a copy, and had been made in a lab? |
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