"I hope you can bring so good news, Nia," Xiang Shan spread his hands.
"The reaction pathways are still a ss," Niyaguti said helplessly, "We don’t know how these special organics ca about or what pathways they underwent, so it’s very difficult to know which genes are involved... And so may not even be genetic changes."
Changes at the genetic level, whether advantageous or disadvantageous, good or bad, are costs borne by both the remodeler and their offspring.
Uncontrollable natural mutations are one thing. Generally, ethically speaking, ancestors don’t have the right to decide all traits of their descendants.
Of course, descendants can indeed cover their ancestors’ choices through new gene modifications.
But this ultimately introduces a certain level of risk.
Each gene modification hides "unpredictable" risks. Even the most excellent scientists dare not assert they’ve fully understood the role of a specific gene segnt within a biological organism. Transferring in a segnt of a gene may produce so novel combinations with other segnts, much like programrs never know how introducing a piece of code might produce bugs. Natural products always lack a holistic "design purpose."
For example, a common modification surgery requires integrating Geno A into cells. This Geno A produces special neurotransmitters to enhance cognitive efficiency. However, a person’s ancestor underwent a quite niche gene modification surgery, having Geno B within. If Geno B coexists with A, it leads to toxic material generation within cells, without a decomposing pathway. In such cases, the remodeler might be poisoned by the cell’s tabolic products.
Similar tragedies occasionally appear among Protector soldiers.
Moreover, modification surgeries can cause a loss of genetic information. This loss may result in future humans being unable to trace the origin of their evolution.
Therefore, neuro-modification technologies that don’t involve genetic information still hold certain space in this era.
Compared to gene modification surgery, these neuro-modification techniques boast stability and controllability.
In an age where "you don’t know what modifications your ancestors underwent," "control" is quite important.
Including using so signal factors to activate or inhibit specific genos, causing cells to change shape within a certain period, or delivering other artificially synthesized cellular components via endocytosis, or embedding miniature artificial crystals directly on the cell surface, to alter specific cells’ electrochemical properties.
Long ago, Yawgmoth told Xiang Shan many life processes aren’t entirely controlled by genes. Or rather, "the proportion influenced by force is relatively large." Just fine-tuning the intracellular environnt, identical genes can exhibit quite varied traits.
Even in those pursuing performance peaks with extre modifications, these kinds of surgeries are considered aningful.
"Considering the existence of such surgeries, predicting your brain material’s generation pathways becos harder," Niyaguti shook her head.
"A ss of accounts," Xiang Shan sighed, "Isn’t there any good news?"
"Well, from comparing your DNA record with that of Xiang Shan in 2075, your similarity to Xiang Shan in 2075 is... around 98.98."
"Oh," Xiang Shan couldn’t help but clap, "So legally, I might not even count as the son of Xiang Shan in 2075? Or perhaps ’legally, this result is insufficient to prove I’m the son of Xiang Shan in 2075’? Is there that much change? Why 2075’s records anyway?"
"This is all that’s left," Niyaguti sighed, "Rember... do you have related mories? It was when we just started being Heroes. We began exploring more radical self-modification strategies. Even ancient ditation techniques were involved. Back then..."
Xiang Shan nodded, "Hmm, yes. But it shouldn’t be this much. Did we really rewrite so many parts? I rember, when you tried integrating sothing, you’d calculate for a long ti, then experint with lab mice, then..."
He lifted his head, "Heck, skipped primates and directly used it on ourselves? A bit crazy."
"Given these conditions..." Niyaguti shook her head, "You know what happened later. When Yawgmoth destroyed the internet, he also erased ’our’ previous bases. Luckily, we prepared for risk dispersion, so indeed there were several bases Yawgmoth didn’t know of. The records I found within only went up to 2075 — speaking of which, Xiang Shan in 2075 and Xiang Shan in 2025 aren’t even the sa species, similarity is about 80%. Why care so much about the 98% data?"
Tao Enhai said, "Slightly smaller than the difference between humans and chimpanzees."
Xiang Shan nodded, "Yeah, true. Then how should I prove I’m myself... huh, no need to prove. My thoughts got caught up in that parentage test gag. The key isn’t how much I resemble Xiang Shan, the key is sorting out those odd genos to see what enhancent surgery plan they can offer ..."
Niyaguti clapped her hands, then spread them, "This is indeed a bit challenging. This couldn’t be sorted out in a short-term anyway. Back then we couldn’t understand all humans’ genes’ uses. During Biosphere Ichigo’s extinction event, public panic thoroughly caused illegal, uncontrolled gene modification surgeries to pollute the world... quite deeply."
Xiang Shan said, "Any way to accelerate this process? Lacking data, we can snatch it, right? Or arrange so modification surgeries not involving genetic material for , at least boost the strength of glial cells first."
Previously, while underwater, everyone couldn’t reach their peak speeds, so this disadvantage wasn’t very obvious. But now at this juncture, Xiang Shan must face Earth’s top martial powers.
Fighting scrub enemies is one thing. A huge gap in acceleration, too much disadvantage in speed change. He couldn’t possibly rely solely on anticipation for everything.
"Surgeries not involving genetic information are generally used for overall limit enhancent, typically placed behind surgeries involving gene modifications. If the glial cells harden, so surgeries requiring drug delivery into the brain can’t be completed. So..."
Xiang Shan said, "Need data?"
Niyaguti nodded.
"Academic exchange?"
Niyaguti nodded again.
"Which Order of Knights?"
"The Soul of Light Knights Order is committed to tracing all native Earth genes within human bodies. The Life Furnace Knights Order broadly collects data from various civil gene modification surgeries. The gene tax and welfare babies are also detected and calculated by this order."
Xiang Shan was stunned, then furious, "My project team?"
"Its predecessor was indeed the research institute within Superman Enterprise, and the research center established in the late secret war," Niyaguti said, "Two out of the three research institutions I worked at before joining Superman Enterprise have beco Knight Orders now. At this stage, you should be used to this kind of thing."
Tao Enhai said, "Besides, you were just the one providing funding. Wasn’t Yawgmoth leading the research institute and research center? How could it be yours? That was the legitimate line of the Father of Machines."
"Find a way to steal the secret data from one of these two Knight Orders," Niyaguti said.
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