Sebacean physiology

[Chocolate]

Given all the genetic modifications in Sebaceans, I always found it weird that they still have the ability to become pregnant naturally at all.

I mean, in this day and age, on our very own Earth, scientists are working on an artificial womb, and it is already possible to fertilize an egg without a spermcell (just any ol' cell would do).

First of all, if in LATP they fertilized Katralla's egg without even telling Crichton, and when he was shocked, they told him that in a planet as organized as that, they wouldn't leave something THIS important to chance, or something to that effect.
Naturally conceived babies have a chance of having all sorts of "flaws", from webbed feet to colour-blindness to Down's Syndrome. If the point of reproduction is to "fill the ranks", as it were, this is a highly inefficient way to do so.

Second, Sebaceans are encouraged to "recreate" with one another as often as they want\can, pretty much, to "relieve tensions". There has been no mention of birth-control, but leaving it up to the soldiers themselves seems very un-peacekeeper like.

Third, on "Natural Election", there's this gas leaking and Aeryn stands there, waiting for it to vapourize, because it can linger in one's bloodstream, and Chiana comes over and says it never used to bother Aeryn before, to which Aeryn replies - "Well, this time I'm pregnant" - Which goes to show that a pregnant soldier, even one who's fetus is in stasis as little D is at that stage, is less efficient and has limited abilities.

Fourth, even though Sebaceans heal really quickly and all that, giving birth in the middle of a fight (though I honestly can't see John and Aeryn's child coming to the world any other way, or Aeryn becoming a mother in any other way), is probably not the best way to go about it.


Any ideas, anyone?

[TINemo]

Amen-- but it would tend to distract the mom from contractions which is a small portion of childbirth classes. Instead we teach them breathing and relaxation methods, we have them walk, we have them use mental imagery,sometimes self-hypnosis. What ever floats your boat.

I don't believe you can fertilze an ovum with *any old cell*--it would have to be haploid(half the number chromosones or you would have Downs sydrome(an extra 21 chromosone) X 23 and that would be lethal.In vivo, there need to be lots of sperm(and an usual ejaculation is 300-500 million) around to act chemically on the outer cover of the ovum--but only one lucky sperm actually gets into the nucleus.In the lab, you can(and they do) introduce a single sperm with a very tiny pipette--and yes I'm surprised the PKs haven't gone that route.

Apparently birth contol devices are not used, Aeryn tried to tell the Scarrans that she might have a whole litter of embryos in stasis from different men. Apparently the*surgeon* could activate whichever one he wanted to.How would he know which? Good question. The preembryos in stasis are supposed to be only 4 cells. You could start them up one more division to eight cells, remove one of those eight cells and test it's DNA to identify the father. That is already being done to test for genetic defects before implantation.
It doesn't seem to matter because any of those cells has the potential to become any organ or part of the body and missing one doesn't mean the baby will have any parts missing.

The more you learn about embryology, the ore amaxzing it is that so many of us turn out essentially normal.

[AERYNSUN]

What I find amazing is that peackeeper soldier, (female) have the ability in their fisiology that the conceived egg has a kind of liquid that puts the embyo in estasis and the embyo could be frozen for seven cycles, so you can chose the right moment to become pregnant.

(I0m sorry, but my englis doesn't reach tech vocabulary, please feel free to correctm at any time, I would appreciate it)

[TINemo]

It's physiology but not to worry.

Technically, a four cell conceptus is not yet an embryo. It has a long way to travel and much developing to do before it earns the name embryo--but more simplicity's sake, Farscape kept refering to Lil D as a fetus, which he eventually was---but not at the time of stasis.

The scientific vocabulary can get pretty sticky so I won't yell at them, but they are not correct by many weeks/months.

[AERYNSUN]

Thank you very much for the correction and for not yelling me. I can do it better but maybe today it's not my day.

Yes you are right, they referred as a fetus when it wasn't even an embryo. Maybe for the Scarrans it's a fetus since it's conceived.

Once again, thank you very much for the correction. Sometines scientofoc vocabulary can be very difficult even in our own language.

[Chocolate]

I don't believe you can fertilze an ovum with *any old cell*[/quote

Well, I believe it was in 1998, but I could be wrong, maybe it was 97 or 99, an Australian scientist managed to fertilize an egg with a cell which was NOT a sperm cell. She did it in a lab, of course, and it was not a human egg, but the ground work is there, so technically it is possible. I haven't heard much of it since, but it made quite a bit of noise at the time, because it raises all sorts of questions as well as answers to many people's prayers (sterile men who can have biological children, and lesbian women who can both be biological mothers). Of course, if both parents are female, the child would have to be invariably female, which raises questions of the natural balance between males and females, and, well, you can imagine...

I suppose that's why nothing was heard of it since, it's probably in ethics committees being debated for years on end.

The more you learn about embryology, the ore amaxzing it is that so many of us turn out essentially normal.

I couldn't agree more... Actually I think the same goes for any part of the human body - last year I took a few courses in neurology at uni, and I have to say that I was truly awe struck by the fact that so many of us are walking around with our cognitive functions intact... No less than a miracle, I tell ya...

[TINemo]

It would still have to be a haploid cell--with 23 autosomes and one X or one Y in order to complete the human chromosone of 48.

I believe I have heard of attempts of parthogenetic (ie. all female) using a diploid stem cell and a spark of electricity to set it off to dividing---again in the lab and probably not a human cell. That comes closer to cloning since only that one person's DNA has any input. Rotifers(a type of invertebrate microbre--sort of-----)can naturally reproduce parthogenetically but it's pretty far down the evolutionary chain from us.

There are all sorts of things you can do in a lab, but not reproduce elsewhere. Recently a drug that treated some form of cancer in mice ,which had been tested sucessfully on primates--I presume monkeys--was tried on 6 humans and all went into multisystem organ failure.

Really what we don't know --yet-- is far greater than what we do. Lotsd and lots to learn and not enough time or money.

[Chocolate]

Hmm... I have no idea what went wrong with my last post, but I trust you were able to figure out which parts were quotes and which were written by me...

Anyway, I'll try that quoting thing yet again -

believe I have heard of attempts of parthogenetic (ie. all female) using a diploid stem cell and a spark of electricity to set it off to dividing---again in the lab and probably not a human cell. That comes closer to cloning since only that one person's DNA has any input.

(hope it worked)

Well, I specifically remember it was not cloning. They were able to modify the cell or something, somehow, and then fertilize an egg with it, and it had two parents, not one (DNA-wise).

There are all sorts of things you can do in a lab, but not reproduce elsewhere. Recently a drug that treated some form of cancer in mice ,which had been tested sucessfully on primates--I presume monkeys--was tried on 6 humans and all went into multisystem organ failure.

I know, there's a lot of criticism against the use of animals in medical research because there is such a huge difference between human physiology and that of other animals (among other criticisms). I know that just because it worked in a lab on mice, that does not mean it'll work on humans, or at least not that it'll happen anytime soon. But it's a start...

I took an interest in the subject a couple of years ago when my best friend and her girlfriend were thinking of having children, and did a bit of research on the matter. They came to the conclusion that it'll probably not be operational in their lifetime (or at least, not while they are still able to conceive children), but maybe in thirty or forty years time, it will be.

I know that work is currently being done regarding an artificial womb, growing babies in a lab, which seems kind of sick at first, but when you think about what a surrogate mother has to go through, maybe growing your fetus in a box or whatever seems more humane...

[frellingfahrb0t]

Hi there!

New to the boards, but not to FS.

On human v. sebacean anatomy & physiology:

I know Rockne O'Banon tends to work a lot of scientific concepts and back-story into his science-fiction pseudoscience. Since PKW and the revelation that Seb. decend from a earth human ancestor, I've been mulling over this fact in tandem with the other peculiarities of sebacean physiology and anatomy and have come up with a few pet theories. I'm an anthropologist, so this type of thing fascinates me.

1. The sebacean genetic "founders" were picked up on Earth roughly 20,000. According to contemporary anthropological thought, humans appear as AMH (anatomically modern humans) roughly 200,000 yrs ago, maybe earlier. However, there were other human sub-species and homonoid cousins sharing the planet at the same time, Neanderthals, "Hobbits" (Homo floriensis) the island dwarf people, and likely others.
2. What we know is that a variety of physiological (inner workings) and morphological (outer appearance) traits have manifested in various locations on the planet as a result of environmental adaptation, (i.e. African descendant have scicle-cell anemia as a result of a biological adaptation to resist malarial infection, Inuit and Aleut peoples have a more compact frame to limit heat loss by reducing exposed surface area, etc.)
3. We also know that sometimes completely non-functional genetic peculiarities pop up as a result of the "founder effect," the fact that a morphological or physiological trait propogates in people of a common ancestry not due to adaptation, but by chance of heritage. So... heat delirium might have come about from either one (or both) of these genetic mechanisms WITHOUT any need for engineering screw-ups by their alien abductors.
4. My guess is that it is a combo job, in otherwords a collision of genetic manipulation, founder genetics and adaptation. Adaptation might have been due to the fact that sebaceans had no ancestral homeworld, (why they were chosen) and spent the bulk of their lives between the stars on command carriers and such. It may have been advantageous to adapt a more cold-adapted physiology to tolerate the fluctuations of carrier temperatures that (I would assume) dipped into the lower range as heat was frequently lost to the vacuum of space. Perhaps more likely is that an extremely well designed spaceship might have a tightly tuned environmental regulation system that would eliminate the "genetic stress" on the sebaceans, making a highly efficient high-temperature theroregulation homeostasis mechanism neither advantageous or non-advantageous, making most individuals of the population unequipped to deal with these conditions. We can see an analogous adaptation with lactose intolerance in humans, i.e. most humans are lactose intolerant after the age of three. However, individuals with a heritage from ethnic groups with an ancient pastoralist tradition, (animal herding), Arabio-Semitic peoples, South Asian, North African, etc. have a greatly decreased incidence of lactose intolerance.
5. Other anomalies like nerve anatomy variance, geometric pregnancies, et al, might have their roots in the specific genetic manipulations by the Eidolons.

On D'Argo Crichton:
1. I have always thought that their might be a marked affect on D'Argo as a result of his surrogate "mother" of Rygel XVI, and the manipulation of Aeryn's DNA by Namtar. On the Hynerian influence, while surrogates don't pass their DNA on to the children they bear, they do pass on lots of other, maybe even more interesting, goodies.
2. Scientist are only now understanding the importance of not only genetics but also symbiotes on evolution and physiology. This is to say the innumerable bacteria, fungi, microscopic plants and animals that inhabit our bodies and make life possible, from the microscopic worms that live in the roots of our eyelashes to the bacteria and other beasties that facilitate human digestion in our guts. These aren't parasites, they're symbiotes, for anyone who has ever had this balance thrown off by medical treatments, (strong anti-biotics, certain chemotherapies, etc.,) it is extremely uncomfortable and inconvenient. (My grandmother had such a problem after bypass surgery and had to have therapy to reintroduce a type of fungi to her mouth and throat so she could eat normally, wierd huh?) Well... we get most these organisms from our mothers.. in utero. We get them from the blood that circulates between us exchanging nutrients, waste, et al.
3. So, D'Argo might have some of the peculiarities of Hynerian physiology simply by virtue of sharing a blood stream for a time with Rygel!

(Geez I typed a lot there)

[TINemo]

Technically,the fetus' blood and the mother's blood never merge(unless there is a tear in the placenta).Everything from nutrients and waste products, from oxygen to the fetus and CO2 back to mom has to pass through the cell membranes. Some things do so readily, but others(due to pressure gradients, size, etc) do not.We don't know what might be found in hynerian blood that would do so, but DNA is a large molecule and doesn't pass as far as I know.Other unknown substances(enzymes, microbes,who knows what), might. Some transfer has to be facilitated by other substances. It's horridly complicated.

I would be more interested in what traits might be expressed from the Sebacean's differences and how they might or might not react with human traits.20000 years isn't very long to have caused as many differences or mutations unless environmental factors apply.Just the stasis pregnancy thing(which by the way doesn't seem to happen to Sebaceans not carrier born) is such a huge change(although kangaroos can do it) you would think it had to be human manipulated rather than accidental.
As always when you think you are only changing one thing, other side effects manifest and you have to look at the risk-benefit ratio. Maybe
cold intolerance or Porypheral nerves was a trade off to get stasis pregnancy which they desired as a warrior people. It doesn't have to make sense because the writers made it up,so........

As for artificial wombs--thse of us in Neonatal Intensive care have long wanted to come up with a better way to care for very immature fetuses instead of trying to have them breathe with underdevelped lungs and try to ingest food with immature digestive systems. The US government, however, declared a moratorium on funding such research decades ago---so we have had to opt for designing better ventilators, substitute feeding substances, etc. It would be so much bettr if they could stay attached to the placenta and have it in a nutrient rich oxygenated environment while they grow old enogh to survive.

The catch of course is that to develop it yu would have to do reseach on immature fetuses and if you can't take one cell from a four cell conceptus to grow a stem cell line, you sure can't *save* purposely aborted fetuses to develop such an environment.

[Mreen]

one little note - Aeryn did say the stasis was something just in infantry born Peacekeepers, something added to the physiology that wasnt naturally there, so it didnt happen when the Interions were altering them.

(I think they may have found that alteration in the decendants very interesting, but there was no time for scientific curiousity in the miniseries!)

[Firecracker]

one little note - Aeryn did say the stasis was something just in infantry born Peacekeepers, something added to the physiology that wasnt naturally there, so it didnt happen when the Interions were altering them.

Not exactly.

Aeryn: Military campaigns can last for many cycles. Imagine if even a portion of a female unit fell pregnant. Those of us born on a Command Carrier can retain an embryonic fetus for up to 7 cycles.

So every PK born on a command carrier has the ability to retain a fetus for seven cycles.

That includes techs and scientists and commandos and upper echelon officers.

As long as they were born on the command carrier.

[TINemo]

The question being, of course, HOW does this work for carrier born females---or more precisely how did someone make it work? What was done to ordinary Sebaceans---who are apparently more similar to humans--to come up with the stasis capability????? What genes were manipulated, what was added or subtracted and where on which chromosome(s)? Did this maniputlation(mutation) also bring about the heat intolerance? Did it cause them to have porypheral nerves that humans don't have? Or are those the result of other tinkering? or of natural evolution? What, if anything ,did they do to the males? They also have heat intolerance and we don't know about their nerve status. Do they have any other *advantages* ?

I still think the author(s) who came up with the stasis pregnancy knew something about the fact that kangaroos(and maybe wallybees-their cousins)--both indigenous and exclusive to Australia--can hold an embryo/fetus in stasis in times of drought for example.

Which reminds me, the nomenclature is very iffy---supposedly the stasis conceptus is a four cell individual. Technically that is not yet an embryo ,let alone a fetus. Those terms apply much later in development although the general public doesn't seem to understand the distinction. When they do in vitro fertilization(ie. fertilizing an ovum removed from the biological mother's body in a petri dish or with a needle containing the biologcal father's sperm) they routinely look at the eight cell conceptus--and particularly if there is a known possibility of a chromosomal disorder--they can remove one of those eight cells, analyze it, get a yes or no--and the remaining seven cells can go on to become a blastocyst and eventually an embryo and then a fetus. They will be returned to the birth mother's fallopian tube or uterus and develop normally. All eight cells have the potential, at that time, of becoming any part of the body and missing one of them does not affect the normal development to approximately 2 billion cells in the newborrn.

Science fiction is lots of fun, but real science is miraculous.

[Mreen]

I think we can safely assume all sebaceans are prone to the heat delerium - it seemed to be well established season one that it was a sebacean thing .. D'Argo complained not enough Peacekeepers died from it, but nearly all sebaceans are peacekeepers, save for a few small colonies of farmers, and those that escaped their terratory. If it was a female only thing, it would have been brought up at some point. The writers were pretty good about that, not suddenly shoving established facts around, with the exception of John not having sisters till Look At The Princess trilogy. The rest, how the heat delerium came into being .. who knows?

But I'll stand back and let physiologists debate about that, I love to listen to science talk

[Firecracker]

I think we can safely assume all sebaceans are prone to the heat delerium - it seemed to be well established season one that it was a sebacean thing .. D'Argo complained not enough Peacekeepers died from it, but nearly all sebaceans are peacekeepers, save for a few small colonies of farmers, and those that escaped their terratory. If it was a female only thing, it would have been brought up at some point.

Mreen is right - it was not just a female thing. All the Commando's in "Exodus from Genesis" suffered from the early stages of heat delirium - just like Aeryn. There were five PK Commando's in EoG and three of them were male.