Genetic analysis continues

[Originally written August 16 2020]

With Lorenzo fully analyzed, it was time to move on to the three new children of Helena and Horatio. I started with Thor, the first of the two boys. Oh man, did he have a doozy of a mutation to start with.

ATP is the vital life force of creatures, the molecule that allows them to have the energy to do things like move or have their organs function. In normal creatures, the toxin ATP decoupler basically expends all the creature’s ATP at once, leaving them with no energy. It’s effectively instant death.

Receptor

Gene 0087: ATP decoupler

Organ: “Current Reaction”, Tissue: “<no tissue>”, Locus: “Reaction Rate”. Chemical: “ATP decoupler”.
Analogue: Output = 0.973 - ((Signal - 0) * 0.937). 

Organ: “Current Reaction”, Tissue: “<no tissue>”, Locus: “Reaction Rate”. Chemical: “Carbon monoxide”.
Analogue: Output = 0.973 - ((Signal - 0) * 0.937).

Yikes! If I understand this mutation correctly, it means that the response usually triggered by ATP decoupler would instead be triggered by carbon monoxide. Thankfully, I don’t think carbon monoxide poisoning is common in Creatures 3.

While digging through his other genes I found out that my mutation reporter doesn’t report insertions of exact copies of genes correctly – I only discovered this because one of his genes later was one number off from the typical slot it was in, and a manual search nearby revealed an extra copy of gene 0360, a Vitamin C receptor. 

The duplicated gene did show up in my report, but it showed as an alteration, which confused me initially because the gene did not appear to be changed. This isn’t really anything I can fix, as it’s not my script that’s at fault; my script just parses and compares the outputs of the official tool, and does not directly view the genomes. 

Other than that, there was nothing of note to report, so I moved on to Freya. Look closely – she does have some indication of her mixed ancestry, as she has the Chichi tail! Freya had a few invisible changes to some pigment genes but otherwise her only mutations were four pose changes. One of these was a slight alteration to her limping gait, which might look strange but I don’t expect it to be problematic. One was a change to the angle of the head when angry. And the last two were alterations to metadata (variant number, etc) rather than the pose string itself.

Finally, there was Loki. I started my examination by looking at the pigment gene alterations, and he actually has a very large mutation! Sadly, it was to the mutability value rather than pigments themselves. It changed the usual value of 255 all the way down to 31, which means that his greenness at birth gene will likely not mutate further. If only such a large mutation had been in the color itself!

Receptor

Gene 0167: Attend to self when tired

Organ: “Brain”, Tissue: “Tissue 3: stim”, Locus: “Neuron(0) state(1)”. Chemical: “Tiredness”.
Analogue: Output = 0 + ((Signal – 0.502) * 0.333).

Organ: “Brain”, Tissue: “Tissue 2: noun”, Locus: “Neuron(0) state(1)”. Chemical: “Tiredness”.
Analogue: Output = 0 + ((Signal – 0.502) * 0.333).

I’m not sure what the effect of this will be. If I understand this correctly, normally tiredness stimulates the “self” neuron of the stim lobe, and now it will stimulate the “self” neuron of the noun lobe. Based on my research it looks like the stim lobe is activated on sensing an object, while the noun lobe is activated on hearing the name of an object. This may mean that there is no notable change, since tiredness would make Loki think he heard the word “self” and presumably then focus on himself, indirectly achieving the same result.

Reaction

Gene 0349: Ag to Ab 2

16 Antigen 2 = 12 Antibody 2 + 2 Coldness.
Rate: 42 (Half-life: 3.2 seconds)

16 Antigen 2 = 13 Antibody 2 + 2 Coldness.
Rate: 42 (Half-life: 3.2 seconds)

This looks like it should be helpful but I can’t find any indication in the genome that the antibodies actually fight the antigens at all; they seem to just be produced as a byproduct of having the antigens in the system. 

A quick test on a Norn in my lab world using the biochemistry kit to add and remove antibodies confirmed it. The spike roughly a third of the way in is where I maxed the antibodies out, and the drop halfway through is where I removed them. In both cases there was no effect on the decay rate of the antigen; the antibodies are simply produced whenever the antigens exist. It’s possible the game engine is coded to kill the bacteria themselves when the antibodies reach a certain level, but they certainly don’t affect the actual antigens.

The remainder of Loki's mutations were extremely minor.