Question: are there any chances of mutating a human or alienify a human if it is then how
Keywords: alien, mutate, superhuman
By BRIDGE8 under license from Mangorolla CIC 2024
Keywords: alien, mutate, superhuman
By BRIDGE8 under license from Mangorolla CIC 2024
Great question. A little outside my knowledge, I think the others are better suited for this question.
One of the interesting things is if life is can be based on something besides Carbon, i.e. can we have life that is non-carbon based. Right now, everything that is living that we know of is a carbon-based life form (needs carbon to form and survive). If life can be changed/exist that it can be formed from other base elements (e.g. silicon, sulfur, or something else), that would mean the possibility for life could exist all over – in a variety of climates, and thus on a variety of planets. This would be a tremendous find and would greatly increase the chance of find life on other planets.
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You can certainly “mutate” a human – humans get mutations in their DNA all the time, and some of these lead to cancers. So it’s generally not a positive thing. These mutations all happen accidentally and at random. We do have the ability to create mutations in other species that do specific things – for example, there are mutations in fruit flies that cause legs to form where the antenna are supposed to be. Modifying the genes in particular ways is what a lot of my work is based on (I do it in mice, mostly, to create mice with leukemia). We can do that sort of thing on purpose, in some cases, but such a thing is of course unethical in humans. As for “alienifying” – given that we don’t know what aliens look like, it’s a tough order. It is interesting to think about whether aliens would even have DNA or whether their life would be based on an entirely different chemistry, as Brad suggested. I think if aliens exist, they would likely be so unrecognisable in form and in chemistry that we would have to study them very thoroughly to learn how their biology worked.
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There are things like retroviruses, which does the reverse of what DNA typically is used for. It could potentially be used to cause mutations.
Typically, this is what happens: DNA → RNA → protein.
In this case, this happens: RNA → DNA → RNA → protein.
Basically you have changed now the DNA which is now incorporated into the genome. It is one way to cause mutations – and people are looking into this for gene delivery systems. I am sure Chris is doing something like this or similar to it.
To “alienify” a human being, you need to define what is classified as an alien. Researchers have already made fluorescent fish (GloFish is the commercial brand name of genetically modified Zebrafish) where they have inserted the gene that encodes fluorescent protein. If we do that to humans (so the skin become fluorescent) – would that make you an alien or would that just make you someone who has a different skin colour?
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