“There is a gene called TP53 – it’s referred to as the ‘guardian of the genome’ – it is a tumor suppressor gene and prevents cancer of all types.”
“Perhaps my favourite biology fact is about pharmacogenetics, how your genetics determines the efficacy of drugs on your system due to prevalence of receptors of different types that the drugs target to produce an effect.”
“That if you unraveled all of the DNA in your body, and stretched it out in a straight line, you’d be dead.”
“Having five fingers in each hand is a recessive gene. Polydactyly (having 6 fingers on each hand) is a dominant gene.”
“Since navel oranges have no seeds, they are all clones of the original mutated fruit discovered by a Brazilian monk a century ago. The billions and billions of navel oranges that have been grown, sold and consumed since are all genetically identical.”
“Cheetahs are extremely inbred. They had a massive bottleneck about 10,000 years ago and had too little diversity to fully recover.”
“Your susceptibility to dental cavities. Dental hygiene matters, but genetics plays a huge role, too.”
“There’s a genetic disease called Laron Syndrome that makes you shorter in stature, a longer life expectancy, and near immunity to cancer and diabetes.”
“The genes that determine the size of your male parts are on the X-chromosome, so you inherited that from your mom.”
“For simplicity, let’s say your mother is 50% Chinese & 50% Spanish. That does **not** mean you are 25% of each. On paper it would seem so but you can have any combination of those two equaling to 50%. It’s not a clean cut in half. It’s a *random* 50% given and 50% not. Although, yes there are dominate genes that can give all the kids a certain nose shape or eye color.”
“Super rare, but there’s a condition called superfetation where twins in the womb have different gestation dates. Basically, the woman got pregnant, then a few weeks later she got pregnant again.”
“Your hair shape changes with hormones”
“Everyone’s cancer is its own unique genetic disease. There is no one true single disease called “lung cancer”, just as there is no one single true human genome. Everyone is genetically unique (yes even identical twins), and every cancer is unique.”
“Hippos are the closest living relative to whales.”
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#13 Then ostensibly, any 'cure' for cancer can only be engineered through the bio-synthesizing of a particular persons DNA. Thus, no cure for all...but one luck bastard.
#13 Well, sort of, but gene splicing is real, happens daily in our bodies (genetics are crazy) so if they can extract the gene and splice it into somone without it, the person can fight off cancer. It would be know as a cancer vaccine... oh wait we already are doing that...