Yeah, I'd go for epigentic effect too... but you pretty much can't mathematically model that at all, what with the various combinations of protiens interaction and mi/siRNA effects you can have with that. Not to mention all the womb condition possibilities.
But if Hal wants something that's a bit more mathematically calculable then I'd go for a non-standard inheritance pattern - like the alzheimer's or parkinson's where the condition gets more severe the more repeated motifs you have. That way he can have incomplete penetrance effects; or high break over conditions droping the number of mages in the population even if it is a benifical mutation; or pretty much any bizzare numbers and combinations he wants. With that type of model he can even get combinations of two magery 3 parents that have only mundane childern if after a certian number of repeats the gene disfunctions entirely giving a mundane child who can only have mundane childern. ;) Basically 0-10 repeats = normal functioning proteins 10-20 repeats = magery 1 high activity protiens 20-30 repeats = magery 2 super high activity proteins 30-35 repeats = magery 3 mega high activity proteins 35+ repeats = gene is broken - no active proteins because the number of repeats is so large that it can't be read through. Usually these types of mutations are found in the promoter regions of a gene - tho sometimes in introns... so they aren't mendelian in inheritance pattern on top of all that, but I digress. The nice thing with this is that if the parents know the number of repeats they had in their genetics (say in a shadowrun type universe) the break down is mathematical and basically mendelian (sort of, there are always exceptions)... you get weird punnett squares if you try to model it but you can get them... where one person has 3 or more possiblities for the state of a chromosome and the other has one or two (like a normal gene). -Sue ----- Original Message ---- From: Anthony Jackson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: The GURPSnet mailing list <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, April 30, 2007 2:17:35 PM Subject: Re: [gurps] Fake scientific genetics for Magery... Susan Koziel wrote: > On the other hand, I wouldn't go with a mendelian inheritance scheme > at all. I'd probably decide to go with an Alzheimer's type pattern > in which it seems that multiple copies of a specific portion of a > gene (copies of a motif) lead to an increase in how early in life you > get the disease. I have a temptation to go for epigenetic effects; inheritable curses and talents are common in magical settings, and various epigenetic switches are a lot more manipulable than conventional Mendelian genetics. _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
