518 – Mapping the X-Gene

0:00So, Jay, mutants aren't humans, right? You mean legally or genetically, Miles? There's a difference? Well, yeah. In a 2003 lawsuit, the United States Court of International Trade determined that action figures of mutants are legally categorized as toys, not dolls, because they don't represent human beings. Ha! Of course, toy business incorporated versus United States was decided in our universe, not Earth 616. So it doesn't really answer the question as it stands within the Marvel universe. But at least for purposes of tariffs in the actual United States, mutants are not human. Now, if you're talking about genetics, it's probably best to let an actual expert weigh in, which is why I've got Dr. Jay McCride on the line. Hi, Jay. Hello. We are so jazzed to finally have a proper geneticist on, so we can settle this once and for all. Homo sapiens or Homo superior are mutants human. Mutants are absolutely human. Non-mutants and mutants can interbreed. Mutants can be born from non-mutant parents.

1:02I think mutants are just a natural part of human diversity. Take that fictional taxonomy. And you know, maybe if Magneto took thousands of mutants to some isolated colony somewhere and they didn't interbreed with humans for hundreds of thousands of years, then maybe you could get into a situation where mutants are a neanderthal-esque subspecies, but I don't think we're, we're very yet, just because they can currently interbreed. Lake the time-compressed sub-dimension of the children of the vault? What? I'm Jay Editing, and I'm Miles Stokes. And we are here to explain the X-Men, because it's about time someone did. Welcome to episode 518 of Jay and Miles, explain the X-Men, where we walk you through the ins, the outs, and the retcons of comics, great as superhero soap opera.

2:03And welcome to Dr. Jemocrite, who I think we're going to call you Dr. Jay for disambiguation purposes. For now, if that's okay. That's perfect. So Dr. Jay is a geneticist and science communicator and is joining us to discuss something that's been on our bucket list since before we started the podcast, which is basically what mutation means and what it means to be a mutant in the Marvel sense. Yeah, Dr. J, thank you so much for being here. I am so excited. Listeners, we've been talking about some of the potential topics here, and we realized we could like do an entire podcast series on this, but we're supposed to start new X-Men next time, so we're just going to do one episode, one potentially very dense episode. I am so honored to be here. I'm a huge X-Men fan, and I'm ready to geek out about genetics with you guys. It's going to be great. So before we start, Dr. Jay, can you tell us in the listers a little bit about who you are and what you do? Yes, so I am a human geneticist by training. I have my PhD in genomics, and I studied how humans evolved, like what makes us different

3:05from Neanderthals and other apes. And since then, I left research for a career in science communication. So I'd like to say that I talk about science instead of doing science. I realized I didn't like programming, I liked public speaking and writing. So I've worked at places like 23 of me in the past, and now I do more of my own writing and activism, and I'm working on a book and all sorts of other different projects. So yeah. And we'll link to other places where you can find Dr. Jay online at the end of this episode and then the visual companion. So definitely check that stuff out. So we were talking about where to start, and well, we just did that cold open about tax autonomy. So yeah, homo sapiens are humanity. In the Marley universe, mutants are often called homo sapiens superior or just homo superior. What do you think, Dr. Jay? What makes sense there? So I think this points to a really interesting question and biology about like, how do you define a species to begin with?

4:05And the simple explanation that is often given is if two organisms can interbreed with each other. So if you read and produce a viable offspring, that means that that kid not just is born, but survives and can produce children of its own and pass on future generations, then you're the same species. But the reality is biology is really complicated. And there isn't some magical point in time where, oh, this one mutation now made something a different species. The reality is there's blurred lines. There's populations and things are happening over hundreds of thousands of years. And we use the term species more just as a way to conveniently categorize things. But there's often exceptions. So like, a lot of people think of humans and neanderthals as different species. But humans and neanderthals interbreed.

5:05So there's even debate in the scientific community of like, should there be a subspecies? Are we actually all one species? A lot of it isn't as totally as objective as you might think. So I think humans or mutants are kind of a similar situation. But customization is real, right? Oh, yes. We're all going to be crabs eventually. That's the important part. You know, you got to know what to prepare for. So one of the things that's been discussed in some writing about the Marvel Universe, I read so much about various opinions about mutants genetics before this. I'm sure like 10% of it has to do with science, but what we'll get to that. So in the Marvel Universe, initially the deal was the mutants first started appearing in the Silver Age. Of course, that would be later retconned to them starting to appear way, way earlier and they were well, we'll get to that as well. And we should define this little very chair. That's the 50s to the through the 60s. So that the time when mutants are also first appearing in comics. Right. And so my limited knowledge of genetics tells me that macroevolution could be a label for that

6:13versus say more gradual continual microevolution. What's your take? Well, I'll start by saying actually, micro versus macroevolution aren't actually terms that evolutionary biologists use. That was one thing I'll just say. It's because evolution can happen in multiple ways in that a lot of it is very gradual. There are, there's standing natural diversity of genetics and that like people are going to have mutations and differences between each other. And maybe at some point in time that mutation doesn't necessarily have a big effect, but it could be that the environment changes in some way. And because the environment changed, now a gene could be expressed in a different way or a particular mutation can have an advantage that it didn't have before because it was not in that particular environment. And so it's hard to label it as just something that's always going to be slow or always

7:13going to have like a big fast reaction because the thing is both things can happen in evolution just depending on what other species are around, what's happening in ecosystems. So the answer to biology is always it's complicated. That's also the answer to continuity generally, I love it. So as we're talking about this in the Marvel Universe, the onset of mutation as specifically referring to the emergence of the X gene is linked very closely to parental exposure to radiation and to nuclear radiation. What kind of correlation reasonably exists there? I think it totally makes sense that radiation could be exposing this mutant trait because radiation is a way that mutations happen. That is a known thing in nature. It's what you see with what can cause certain types of cancer. That's one of the major things that happen in real life.

8:13So I think that being a mechanism for mutants totally makes sense. But I think it also makes sense like there are some mutants who they weren't exposed to radiation necessarily. And there are mutations that just happen from cells dividing. Every child is going to have what we call denovo mutations or new mutations where parts of their genome don't match their parents because when sperm and egg cells divide, mutations happen. So it can also just be that, hey, you just got it by random luck. So it goes back to the inherited mutations versus the environment causing it. And I think we see both of those plot lines happening in X-men. Yeah. I mean, technically, if you want to go way deep, the giant robot space god Celestials implanted the X-factor into Homo erectus, which then was passed down all the way to Homo sapiens, and then triggered not because of radiation, but because of the coming of the fourth host of Celestials, that probably is less related to actual genetic science, but it makes me

9:14very, very happy. But as far as that, as far as having this sort of genetic factor that perhaps would have been, would have started showing up way, way, way in the past, and then being triggered by something that could happen a way, way later in a widespread fashion, is that something that would be realistic genetically? To the extent that's in X-men, you know, it's probably an over exaggeration, but it's within the realm of possibility, in the sense of like what I was saying earlier, that there is sometimes standing genetic variation that in a certain environment, you might not see it. It might not seem as a different trait, but if the environment changes or there's some sort of stimulus, then that trait can be exposed. And I actually think a great example of this, so I am a trans man. And as a geneticist, I see how the human genome, it doesn't matter if your X-X or X-Y, every human genome has the potential to develop into a man or a woman based off what hormonal

10:20triggers are happening. This is why HRT works in trans people. And I think kind of the mutants are a similar thing in that way, of that like your genome has that underlying ability to do this thing. But if you don't give the hormonal or the trigger, it's not going to go down that path. So I could totally see a mechanism for where there's some underlying mutant genetics, but something has to happen to kind of turn it on. Yeah, I remember in the alternate reality house of M where everybody wanted their babies to be mutants, it was recommended officially by the government to keep your home at exactly 68 degrees to increase the chance of your babies being born mutants, just like trying to nail down all of the different environmental factors that could be related. See, I read that as a really sort of a pointed riff on the ridiculous parenting and prepartum advice that exists in popular wisdom in our culture, like not as specific to mutants,

11:21so much as like the eat only these foods keep your house around this temperature to increase chances of conception or to increase chances of successfully incubating the dream designer child or whatever. And you know, there are examples in nature where temperature does have a lot of effects on development. I, there are some, I think there's some lizards, oh gosh, I should have done my research here, but there's some, there's sex determination is actually temperature based. I think maybe turtles, some, some hermitologist is going to get mad at me, but I don't know the exact details, but you know, it's like if you, you can have the same baseline genetics, but if you incubate those eggs at a higher temperature, you're going to get more males or more females. And so again, not outside of the realm of possibility that temperature could have some activating effects on how things develop. So as far as that underlying gene, the X factor, as it's called, or the Essex factor,

12:23if you're Mr. Sinister, he named it after himself, is the X factor the same thing as the X gene or is it the potential to have offspring with the X gene because I've never been quite sure of that. So from what I've read, they generally refer to the same thing, although this being comics, this being the Marvel universe, it can occasionally be inconsistent. What we know about the X gene, the X factor, in some comics, it is stated to be carried down to the 23rd chromosome. Some further statements say that it's specifically on the female genome. And according to astonishing X number 37, as described by the Marvel database, I'm just going to read this once activated, the X gene leads via transcription and translation to the production of an exotic protein. This protein produces chemical signals inducing mutations on other genes ending up with mutant organisms variously empowered. So Dr. Shay is far as that, as far as a gene whose sort of manifestations come through other genes, is that something that's common in the real world? Absolutely.

13:24I mean, that's how the whole genome works, and that genes create proteins that then can activate other genes, and that's how different cells in your body specialize to do different tasks and be different organs, and it's how the fact that every soul in your body has the full genome in it, but is expressing different genes, it all comes from this kind of trigger of Rube Goldberg-esque system of genes doing things to other genes. So the idea of having some sort of gene that is the starting switch for cascade of a lot of different things, totally within the realm of possibility, again, going back to sexual development, that's what the SRI gene on the Y chromosome does of triggering what's quote-unquote normal male development. If you have XY chromosomes, but you delete that SRI gene, you will develop into a female, even though you have XY chromosomes. So I could see the mutant gene, the X gene, having some sort of effect like that.

14:26Though I'll also say, I am a little skeptical that there's a claim that it's on the X chromosome, and that's how I'm going to interpret female genome, because we see a lot of female mutants, right? I mean, it's an usually X-linked inheritance when there are genes in the X chromosome. It's more often expressed and visible in males, because when you have XY chromosomes, you don't have this other copy, this other X chromosome, in order to mask recessive traits. So that's why colorblindness, we see men are more likely to be colorblind, because colorblindness is on the X chromosome. People with X chromosomes, because you have two copies, if you have one that has the recessive trait for colorblindness, the other X chromosome could have a normal functioning color-vision gene. And so if the mutant variant is on the X chromosome, then we would see way more male mutants

15:32than female mutants. But I feel like the sex ratio is actually pretty equal in the Marvel universe. I don't know, is that what you two think? Yeah, yeah, it really seems to be. The ratio of lead characters who are mutants definitely is higher for women than in the rest of the Marvel universe. Yeah, so I'm skeptical about where they think the location of this X-chain is, but it being starting trigger, I think that's very plausible. For what it's worth, the thing about it being on the, as they put it, female genome, I think that was like from some random non-X-spin off-book, so we could probably just discount that one, especially since, as you're explaining, it makes no sense. But I like that. I like that this idea of this single genus X-factor implanted by robot space gods, I will always remind everyone, could lead to varied powers like that, because that was one of my big confusions as a kid about the X-men, like, wait, there's one gene, and it gives some people optic blasts and some people teleportation powers and some people telepathy, what? But this makes sense that it can trigger different types of traits, depending on a lot

16:33of different factors. The really answer is, I think in genetics, one of the most common misconceptions out there is that there is a gene for some trait. And I think we even hear this like, Vagay gene, but the reality is there are very few traits that are only controlled by a single gene. Most things are what we call polygenic, where lots of genes contribute very small effects to an overall trait. And so I think I would view the X-gene as maybe a starting trigger to either turn on or off mutant powers, but there are probably hundreds and thousands of other genes that actually are controlling what the power is and how it manifests. So it's probably a very complex system, then just like, you have the gene, or you don't. One more thing I wanted to mention, you talked about how the X-gene causes mutations in the genome. Like, that is its effect.

17:34And I find that really interesting because it reminds me of how some inherited cancer predispositions work in genetics in that you've heard of maybe like the braca gene predisposes you to developing breast cancer. And that is something that could be inherited. There are things we call oncogenes where they encourage cell growth. And if they're not regulated correctly, you get uncontrollable mutations. And so to me, it's very interesting that it has that mechanism because I think that could be something that's happening. You could have a gene that causes more mutations or less corrections in your genome. And it goes back to the original idea of like, why are some things activated via radiation? That is an example of, okay, maybe you don't have a brachimutation. You don't have an inherited predisposition to cancer. But because you were exposed, or you smoked cigarettes, and now you have lung cancer, or

18:37all those kind of things like carcinogens, that is the environmental factor. So going back to just genex being complex, I think there are probably mutants who are born that way, and there are mutants who acquired it. So the Beverly Universe actually accounts for this, so there are mutants, capital M, who have mutations that are an expression of the X gene, and there are mutates lowercase who have mutated via other means. So like, say, Spider-Man, or the Fantastic Four, or many of the genotian people who have powers who often identify with and are grouped in with the mutants, but in fact, would not necessarily have manifested those powers on their own, were they not scientifically modified. So that's a fringe case, because my understanding of the genotian mutates is that they are specifically care, they're specifically people with a predisposition towards, or possession of the X gene whose mutations haven't activated. Okay. So genotian mutates versus Spider-Man-E mutates versus mutants are sort of our three categories.

19:38Exactly. So we actually had a question about that from Chapman Blake, and Chapman emailed us to ask, in the Beverly Universe, the difference between mutants and mutates, and more specifically, their difference in treatment by society writ large, has become a topic of conversation both in and out of world. Can you think of similar examples where genetic information-slash knowledge, typically out of the layman's purview, has been used to single out groups, especially ones that share similarities with groups that are not as heavily targeted? Is there a precedent in the field of information being misinterpreted by the general public and the backlash that can accompany that misinterpretation? I mean, short answer, absolutely. I think this is where we see history of racial discrimination based off of misunderstanding of genetics, and that I always like to describe it as, you know, race has biological components, but is nowhere near as discrete or defined as people like to make it out to be that there is more genetic diversity when you look within Africa than between groups of humans.

20:45But historically, people have used genetics to do horrible things in terms of eugenics. I mean, of the original genetics movement of like, founding fathers of the fields in the 1920s in America who were studying population genetics and evolution, that's what Nazis took inspiration from in order to discriminate against different groups of people because they thought, ah, genetics, this shows how some groups are just better and more evolved and yada yada, but the reality is, they're not, and that is a cultural judgment of what group you think might be better, but when we actually look at stuff like intelligence and athletic ability, we find that all humans, you know, we have our differences, but it's not discrete in that like, this group of people is just better at this or worse at this. Or even just the framing of, what do we decide is good and bad, that's not always objective.

21:51It's coming from the people who are in power of making those definitions of what's good or bad, but from an evolutionary point of view, the best thing is actually to have diversity because there is not some end goal to evolution. There isn't some supreme optimized form that evolution is striving towards. It's making lots of different things because you don't know what the environment is going to be selecting for or throwing at you, and that is why you want a diverse team of mutants we have different powers because you don't know when someone is going to be able to shut down all the telepathic abilities and you need the person who isn't affected by that, if all the whole group was the same, that's not good. So this is why fundamentally, like, eugenics does not work because it's cultural bias of what we think might be better or not, and that's not what's actually going on biologically.

22:55I really, really appreciate it when things that are evil are also just bad science. Oh yeah. Yes. I want to go back to Chapman's question, though, because one of the other things that it brought up for me is the long and horrific tradition of scientific experimentation on marginalized and vulnerable groups. We certainly see that represented metaphorically with what happens to mutants in the Marvel universe. Well, and with the genocent mutants in particular, absolutely, and you can see parallels in terms of the number of non-consensual scientific experiments that have been conducted on populations of color, on populations, on people with mental illness, on people who are incarcerated like are, is really, really high and really, really, really recent as we look at those things. So you're talking about this as sort of historical stuff, but it's very much part of, part

23:56of our present. Yes. I think a lot of people like to frame it as like, oh, Nazis were doing this experimentation, or maybe we talk about the Tuskegee syphilis experiments in the United States on black populations that were highly unethical, and a lot of people try to frame it as, oh, these were these things that were happening a hundred years ago, and we all know better now, but yeah, we're certainly going on into the 90s. Yes. Like, these are recent things, and I dealt with this, these issues a lot in my career because I work in precision health and population genetic studies, where we're trying to get people to enroll in research, because we want to have people be healthier and benefit from this, and a lot of it was, how do we recruit diverse populations into these studies? Because genomic studies have been traditionally very biased people of European ancestry to white people, and part of that was because, frankly, obviously, bias, but it was easier.

24:59It was like, if you're at a university, and you're, the university is already biased to have a white population, and you're getting people to enroll, and it's white researchers. People have their own biases, and they dumb white people, they don't think, huh, maybe we should try to diversify this. I'll just collect whoever's signing up, and if you don't go out of your way to actually engage other groups, you naturally have that bias. It's not until recently that the genomic community has been putting a lot of effort into trying to engage other populations, because if you don't have research on people of your background, you're not going to be able to come up with new medical advances that actually help those populations. But those populations very rightfully just trust medical researchers, because they've been abused so much in the past, and they're definitely some scientists who don't approach it in an empathetic way and are just frustrated and don't understand why, why don't they just trust us? It's like, well, because lots of stuff has gone bad before, so I will say I think my field

26:06is trending in the right direction here. There have been a lot of advances. There have been studies are way more diverse than we were seeing 10, 20 years ago, but those biases, they still happen today. This is not something that's been solved. You look at it when you're looking at screens for skin cancer that, oops, the screens were all based off white skin, and so when you look at black people, you don't actually have something that's catching it as high, or there's a million examples I could give. I remember that being a major issue during monkeypox, because anything with anything with cutaneous symptoms was overwhelmingly only photographed and demonstrated and distributed in an expression in white populations. Yep, and I've experienced this personally just as a trans man trying to get any sort of health care when I go into my doctor, and I ask questions, the answers I get are often, well, there's never been any studies done on trans men, so I have no idea what to tell

27:11you. Like, that's not great when you're trying to speak about extremely frustrated solidarity. Yep, and so if you don't have the studies, you don't have the answers, but at the same time, when you're being abused by the system, how do you get people to enroll in that? So it's very complicated. We mentioned the issue of X gene activation, and I know that's something that has always been a big part of the mutant story. And we actually had a good question from Marius on Blue Sky that I think puts it pretty well. And I asked, usually the X gene and mutants activates during puberty, what could factor into the activation, hormones, mass, telomere length, et cetera, and how would the process work at a cellular level? And I'd add to that, what could account for earlier or later manifestation or activation? Yeah, I think that's a great question. I think hormones, especially since we see mutants having activation in puberty, that's probably a big factor. And we see how you hit puberty, and you suddenly start, you know, if you're going through

28:11male typical male development, you're going to get body hair, facial hair, or typical female development, you get breast development, like all those sort of things, it's very common for hormones to trigger a cascade of events. But I want to ask you here really quickly that we're using male and female as typical terms, as discussing biological processes with the understanding that not everyone who undergoes those is male or female, that it's a lot more than that. Yep, and saying that as someone who's just gone through my second puberty right now, and I think, you know, even going through that second puberty again shows that like, you know, you add that hormone, and this thing can happen, you can change and show something. And I think stress is another thing that's very interesting to note that that's something they can often trigger mutant powers, because there's actually a study that just came out last year, I remember seeing this a couple months ago, I was watching it at a symposium at the American Society of Human Genetics Conference last October on how stress changes

29:13gene expression. And so this is a big issue that geneticists haven't been taking into account as much as they maybe should be when they're looking at population genetic studies, because hey, if you're part of a minority population that is always stressed because maybe the government is after you and your life is horrible, your genes are going to be expressed in a different way than if you're relaxed and not dealing with those kind of life stressors. So something as simple as stress that definitely can, you know, that could turn out in mutant power for sure. Or again, I feel like trans people are such an amazing biological experiment in a way, not an experiment. But I was like, we show how biology works by how what happens in our transition and like one thing I found was when I started testosterone, my ADHD symptoms got way worse and they became

30:14much more typically quote unquote, male after being on testosterone. And I have seen this with all sorts of other trans people talking about how ban HRT changed how certain like chronic illnesses they had presented. And so these sorts of things, like having those external influences can totally change how your genes are being expressed. So you know, we're talking about mutations as sort of a general thing and it's something that we're defining as generally roughly plausible within a fictional universe. And Billy asks a question that kind of forces us to focus a little more closely on that, which is which X person has the most realistic mutant power or what defines a realistic mutant power. So how I'd sort of enlarge that. I love that. Ooh. Um, the first things that come to my mind, honestly like, well, beast is blue. Maybe not the blue part, but I was thinking like the blue part string, we're going to come

31:15to that. But the blue part is secondary. It's not his, it's not his main mutation. Oh, good. No, it's not his, it's not his, it's not night in natural expression of his mutation. This is where I need your expertise. No, I think like super strength, super intelligence, things that are already traits humans have, but maybe it's just that turned up a little. I think those are all very plausible or even maybe some of the healing factors where, you know, some people do have better immune systems than others or some people struggle with, some people scar more easily or bruise more easily. So I could see like that being within the realm of current biology that maybe you can have super self-healing, but the stuff when it starts getting into like shooting fire out of your body or ice or any sort of like the telepathic abilities, that's when I'm like, I have to suspend disbelief of like what protein is being expressed that could make this happen, you know, that's when you have to kind of just hand wave and accept

32:16it's, this is a fictional universe and it's, it's fun, I'm not going to overthink it too much. At least that's my reaction. The MST3K Declamer, repeat yourself, it's just a show I should really just relax. And that's actually interesting because in the Romulus story arc of Wolverine, I would explain that, Dr. Jay, but it's not worth it, trust me. You don't want to know, you don't want to know. Yes. But during that arc, it was stated that the feral gene, which is a sort of subset of the X gene, which creates animal traits and mutants, is the most common type of mutation. So there is some canon to that. The 198 files after M day, also positive that maybe personality can correlate to mutant power types. I don't really think we can talk about that genetically, unless we want to talk about genetic components of personality traits, but I thought it interesting. Interesting. The feral gene, that intrigues me, not to talk about a different fandom, but I'm a big Star Trek fan and I'm sure there's probably overlap. Oh, yes.

33:16The audience. There's, I'll say one of the lives we've covered crossovers. Oh, yeah. Well, one of the episodes of Star Trek that makes me the maddest to watch as an evolutionary geneticist is the one where they de-evolve into like previous species because that is not how evolution works or genomics works. Like, we do not have genes hidden in us that, oops, if they were just turned on, you grow cat ears. Like, that's, that is not how it works. Like, the feral gene, that's where I'm like, no, I draw the line there. That wouldn't, that wouldn't be happening. So I got to ask really, is this a threshold thing? Like, do you do object to, to, to weird warp 10 lizard sex? Oh, absolutely not. Pro, pro weird lizard sex, of course. Good. Good. But we can keep doing the episode. We all agree. God, that was a weird episode. A voyager. I mean, we haven't covered threshold on the show because it's not X-Men German. But I can use that as a segue to go from talking about lizard sex to talking about human

34:18and mutant sex. So there's a lot said about reproduction of mutants and non-mutants and how that happens in the Marvel Universe. There's some discussion of, if you have two mutant parents, they can have trouble producing offspring when they do, there's also discussion of whether mutants can crossbreed with not just humans, but like Atlanteans, in humans, dire rates, stuff like that. Okay. Atlanteans are a whole other mess. I'm curious about what you mentioned just a moment ago about mutants, mutant parents having trouble having kids. I remember that being a thing in runaways, has that turned up anywhere else? In the comics? I'm not actually sure. And I think that's in large part because you get a lot of story potential when you have two mutant characters that people know and love slash hate have a kid. So I think the actual genetics of it has been thrown by the wayside in favor of story. I would love to talk about that more because I think this is something that you see in genetics

35:19and the example that pops into my head just because I'm neurodiverse, have autism, ADHD, spectrumy, that kind of blur of stuff. And I think that is an example of where it's a polygenic trait. There are many different variants and mutations that add up to express a trait. And this is why autism is a spectrum in that there are some you might have less mutations and variants. And so it expresses itself in not a way that is as like debilitating to like function in society. And like add up to being completely nonverbal or like a more extreme version of the trait and you see if like two autistic people have children, sometimes like the children can have more, more of like a genetic load and show more of the trait because they are getting

36:24more of those variants from both parents. So that sometimes can happen with genetics where it's like having some level of that variation probably adaptive because there is a benefit to having people in society, again, diversity of like people who think differently. And I always joke that back hundreds of thousands of years ago, I probably would have been the witch at the edge of the woods who has a different chronotype, a chronotype is like when you naturally wake up and go to sleep, I'm a really late riser. And I would have been encyclopedically remembering every plant in the field and I'm maybe a weirdo and you just leave me alone. But there's a benefit to the tribe to having that one weirdo and I say weirdo lovingly. Again, mutants were like we're promuting here that you have that person. It's good. But then you don't want the whole tribe to be that way. And you can get to a point where if it's so extreme, maybe it is harder to function and

37:25especially, you know, and that's very, again, environmentally determined because if you're living in an environment where maybe capitalists, capitalists have formed a world that is not adaptive and welcoming to people like me, then your trait is less, like it has more problems that pop up, but it's not necessarily because of some inherent thing in your trait. It's, yeah, we're fairly hard on subscribers to the social model of disability here. Yes. So I think you see a similar thing with like how mutants are showing here. But I think you bring up an interesting point there, which is that social factors are among the environmental factors that can contribute to nurturing or quashing a specific genetic offshoot. And that actually makes me think of a question we got when we put out our call for questions from Tim Oliver-Grow. Tim emailed us to ask, I was wondering what the opinion of geneticists is on mutant powers being handed down generationally versus random mutations, powers slash attributes. And if there's a better case for one over the other. And also about

38:30instances where siblings have similar powers, like feral and thorn, or powers that work together, like Aurora and Northstar, and siblings who are immune to each other's powers, like cyclops and havoc, versus siblings with completely unrelated powers like the rest mutant or Guthrie siblings, basically as far as which powers manifest that are cross-family versus completely unrelated. I think that's a super interesting question. My initial reaction is I think something where the siblings have similar powers is probably more likely, just because you know, they are inheriting similar genetics. But you know, siblings are 50% related. So you're not going to have the same exact combo passed down from mom and dad. So there could be just in the shuffle of inheritance. Maybe you happen to get the variants that give a different power than you're sibling. So we often talk about this in terms of heritability is what geneticists use. And so

39:33something like height is very heritable in that the genetics really manifest in the trait and environment tweaks it a little. So like yeah, if you have proper food and nutrition as a kid, you're going to be taller with the same exact genetics, you know, as a twin who maybe was starved, even if they have the same exact genome as you. So that's just doing like twin studies to study this. And this is also why like if you look at like this is when there is trying to study the gay gene and like what's going on there, there was about like 30% concordance and twin study. So if one twin was gay, there's 30% chance the other twin would also be gay. And that's, you know, you have an identical genome. You would think if your genome is identical, shouldn't it be a hundred percent? But the environment plays a huge role. And that environment can mean anything from the hormones you're exposed to in the womb, your nutrition, how you're just treated by society. And if that makes you

40:39repress traits that actually kind of are happening, but you just, you know, you don't show. And so there's a lot of complexity that goes in there. So I could see something like that happening with the mutant sibling powers. This takes us to the question of secondary mutation, which is a big complicated knot. And it goes back to what you're talking about to beast being blue. So beast's blueness is a result of among other things, irregularities and comic book coloring. But ultimately is the result of him experimenting on himself in an attempt to do some stuff in the 70s. He also watched a lot of Gumby. It's not really, it's not something we tend to go into super deep detail on. And of course, later on, he would mutate again at the beginning of New X-Men after being severely, severely injured in extreme X-Men. So this was like a continual evolution. It would happen again. He would turn into more of an ape form. But

41:40yes, I think it wasn't really called secondary mutation specifically until New X-Men when it became kind of a big thing, mutants developing a dish. Right. I think Rhett Morris and specifically introduced the term and the prospect of secondary mutation. I made me a mistake in here apologies if so. And I think one of the first characters we saw it with was Emma Frost, who was also distinct among secondary mutants in that her secondary mutation has absolutely no connection to our primary mutation. And we fact, in fact, it would we know was for narrative convenience, because Morrison couldn't get Colossus on the team and wanted a character who could function similarly in fights. So gave Emma a secondary power that wouldn't elaborate to do that. But secondary mutations happen when a character who is already a mutant who already has an expressed mutation mutates further either their mutation strengthens or they develop a different additional mutation. I'm so glad this came up because this is just what happens to all of us,

42:41to all organisms and that it kind of goes back to what I was saying about cancer genetics being a very good example in that this is why we say if you have a certain bracket mutation that you inherited from a parent, you are predisposed to breast cancer, but it does not mean you are going to get it. It is not a 100% chance. And the reason that is is you need other mutations to happen that break down other parts, other genes and other parts of the system. It's like one mutation isn't enough to break everything. The genome has a lot of like backup systems, but because you start with one of those mutations, if it takes three strikes, you already start with a strike against you. But as you just exist and we're exposed to UV rays from the sun, you're exposed to carcinogens in the air or there are all sorts of ways to acquire mutations.

43:42Mutations also just happen from getting older. Just cell division every time when your cells divide, there are going to be new mutations in it. The genome that you started with when sperm met egg from your parents is not the same as what you have in your body right now. It's mostly the same, but not every cell in your body, it has the same exact genome. There are some cells in your body that have mutations that other cells in your body don't have. So this is something that could happen and that maybe you start with the X gene and that gives you that starting mutant power, but later in life, if you're causing more mutations to yourself or something else causes that, you could get other stuff. So secondary mutations totally feasible. Yeah, I would put that in the totally feasible camp. You know, in a universe where primary mutations as expressed in marvell are feasible, secondary mutations are no less feasible. Yeah. So another thing that comes up

44:45in X-Men involving the expression of mutant genes is different organizations, usually awful bigoted organizations trying to demutantify people or there was that one time the high evolutionary sense of science raised and demutated everybody, but let's not worry about that. So we see like Dr. Kavita Rao's hope serum from astonishing X-Men. We see X size from X-Men legacy. We see a few other things as well. And Ken A asked on Blue Sky about that. Several X stories are about cures for mutants. Are there actual medical treatments that completely block a gene from being expressed at all? Or do we only deal with individual expressions slash the effects of genes? Oh, great question. I'll start by saying I am a little derailed by the fact that there is a character called the high evolutionary. I am going to look this up after. Is this a villain? He's a special man, Dr. J. He is a very special man. He's a villain with an astonishing sense of pink and white style and we're pretty sure that his views on evolution are

45:46from the fact that he is high all the time. Oh boy. Well, I'm going to Google that later and let that be also spiders. Spiders are involved. Interesting. Well, gosh, are all the villains evolutionary geneticists? No, we have Hank McCoy. We have one good one at least. That was that one time. He moonlights. Oh boy. Oh boy. No, but going back to, yeah, curing genetic traits. I mean, whoo, that is a big topic nowadays because you know, just in the last couple of years we see CRISPR for gene editing and I remember when I was first studying genetics, I got my undergrad degree in 2010 and I've got finished my PhD in 2016. You know, gene editing to cure horrible diseases was really seen as this holy grail of, you know, this is why we're studying this. Like, oh, if you have debilitating horrible diseases, wouldn't it be great to be able to snip it out and put in the

46:50correct copy of a gene so that these people aren't dying horrible deaths and we are starting to see in the last couple of years gene editing being used to like cure sickle cell and it's going to be doing lots of amazing things. But the flip side to that is obviously, again, going back to the original topic of who decides what is bad and should be edited out. And we are honestly seeing a resurgence in eugenics in the United States and across the world. Yeah, I was going to say, this is something particularly germane to the current current administration and specifically to their views on autism. Oh, yes. And that is what like I, there are certain companies out there that are starting to promise like, hey, we will do, you know, screen embryo screening so that you can pick the embryo that doesn't have autism and does have blue eyes and like all these things that

47:51aren't like debilitating horrible, it's not like progeria or, you know, something where it's like there's clearly no benefit to having it and you want to heal it and it's more subjective and it's very scary as someone who, you know, is trans and has autism that people who are like colleagues of mine are like, oh yeah, we're going to help people screen their baby so people like you can't be born. And I think people don't reflect on how scary that is. But I will give a counterpoint to that because I know what I just said was very scary and that one of my favorite professors in undergrad who was my human genetics professor or my junior year, she was this emeritus professor, old Jewish woman who, Anna Berkowitz, rest in peace, she was an Auschwitz survivor and had a perspective of that of like, hey, I saw my people be cold because I was seen

48:55as lesser and she is who taught us about eugenics and also taught us why it's bad science and doesn't work because even if you're coming from the point of view of a Nazi and you're deciding this is bad, we're going to just murder all these people to clear up the gene pool from that perspective. The way evolution and genetics works is new mutations always happen. Like I just said, there are always de novo mutations. There are always children. Every child is born a little different from your parents. So even if you got rid of every autistic person and every variant that predisposes to autism, people would still be born with those variants from random chance. Like even if you got rid of every trans person just from the way genetics works, new trans people would be born. And so that was always her message of kind of hope of that, you know, even if evil is

49:56trying to do this, the diversity is going to come back because that is how the system works. So this is why I also always say that like, you know, especially with traits that are polygenic, it's not one simple gene to just edit and fix like sickle cell, it's going to be really hard to edit out autism or transness or insert other complex trait here. I want to ask a follow up question to that, which is how feasible that kind of gene editing is in a grown person. Because that's something that's the thing that we keep on seeing an X-Men is, you know, there's a cure for mutants. And this isn't presented as a cure that you can access at conception. It's not a cure you can access to my IVF. It's a cure that you an adult mutant can go in and access as an adult. Like what is the feasibility of something like that? Yeah, I got goosebumps you asking me this question because the reality is it's becoming feasible. It is like we have cured people with sickle cell,

51:00this has happened in like the last couple of years. Like this is we are just turning, we are just turning the tide of being able to have this technology. Like this is happening and it's going to be rapidly expanding over the next, you know, foreseeable future, which is why it's also so important for geneticists to be educating the public about eugenics and about biases so that it is used in a way that is not reckless and not evil. You know, it's like yes, it's good to use it for things that are truly horrible, debilitating diseases and when people can can send to those procedures and want them done. But whenever it becomes forcible, you know, like that's when or who's making the judgment call of what needs to be fixed. That's when you run into issues and again, I'll say like the silver lining to not just be scary is that it's easier to fix things where it is one gene

52:00and it's very straightforward and it's like a point mutation. That's when one letter, I mean, you have an A to a T and it's like one letter has changed. There's lots of other genetics that are way more complicated where, you know, how a trait is expressed is determined by something like called copy number. It's like how many copies of a gene you might have because not every humans have the same number of copies of a particular gene and many things are polygenic and so it's complicated to quote-unquote fix or change a genetic trait in an adult if it's not something that is a simple gene and, you know, most things aren't one gene determining something. And there's also all sorts of side effects that can happen. Like that's a big thing that is being worked out right now is you want to make sure the gene editing has really good targeting because it basically works by going into your genome, making a little cut and putting the right thing in place. Well, whenever you're cutting up the genome, lots of things can go wrong. You can get a lot of

53:02cancer or other unintended effects if you are cutting places you don't mean to be cutting and so that's where a lot of research is happening right now to make it much more targeted and specific so you don't have other effects. But it is, it's feeling a little like the Wild West. So, you know, I did not think we would hit this point of technology this early in my lifetime. Honestly, it's a little like, it's both awe-inspiring and a little scary. So I think it's good that, you know, as a public we're having these kind of discussions just so people know like where genetics is going. Because I don't want to fear manga around genetics. Like I got into this field because I saw it as a way to help people and to help with horrible medical issues and also just to like learn about humanity and where we came from and how we like, I love evolution because it shows how, you know, humans, we are just animals. We are connected to all other life on the planet. Like we're not like, I don't view humans as this particularly special thing. Like,

54:05we have cool stuff. Don't get me wrong. We're like intelligence and working together and we built society. Like we did all these things that, you know, other animals didn't do, but we can't go locate. We can't breathe underwater. There are, quote unquote, mutant powers that other animals have that we don't have. And so I think this is why, you know, this is why I went to science communication education because I think nothing is simple and you need to just kind of understand the complexity of what's going on in order to actually make ethical decisions about things. Dr. J, I wish all geneticists were more like you and less like Mr. Sinister. Oh, there are a lot of good ones out there too. Don't, a lot of my colleagues, you know, they're all trying to make the world a better place, you know. Yeah, so the question then becomes how that better place is defined. That said, Dr. J, thank you so much for coming on. You know, you talked about the work you're doing. Now, where can folks find you online if they're interested in learning more? Yeah. So I am on blue sky and Instagram under my name, Jay McCryte. That's J-E-Y.

55:15And I also have just started this educational advocacy campaign called Beyond X and Y. You can find out more about it at Beyond X and Y.org. And it's basically to educate people about the actual nuance of what genetics says about sex and gender and why it's more complicated than just XX versus XY. Hell, yeah. Thank you again so much. This has been such a blast. So thank you for having me on. I am so glad I got to geek out with both of you. It is an honor. And with that, Jay and Miles, explain the X-Men, is recorded in Forest Hills, New York, and Portland, Oregon, and produced by Matt Hunter, who also arranged our theme music. You can find more of Matt's work at www.moonheithentalk.bandcap.com. New episodes come out most Sundays on Apple podcasts, Spotify, and then explain the X-Men.com. Check out explain the X-Men.com for visual companions to every episode. Our show is 100% listener supported. If you'd like to help us stay in the air and add free,

56:15check out the Patreon link at the top of explain the X-Men.com. We rely on word of mouth for listeners to find us. So if you like the show, please take a minute to tell a friend and to rate and review us on your favorite podcasting platform. Both really help. In two weeks, we begin Grant Morrison's groundbreaking run on New X-Men.