if your DNA could be changed.

[silverdraco]

A wierd question that keeps hounting my mind so I let it out.
If sience was so far that your DNA could be changed into what ever you would want it to be what would you have your body chang into or what would you have changed.

Their it's out the wierd question is out of my head.

[crazedgoblin]

id like to have traits like a cats nightvision etc

[Lord of the Forest]

I wouldn't change anything.

[Diablo_68]

Duh. I would get my DNA changed to be the exact DNA of poeple who annoy me, then go do a crime and afterwards change it back to my own DNA.

*Headine news*

"DNA Prooves Keith Chegwin robbed bank last week"


Cunning  

[Grid Blader]

DNA change, Hummm..  I dont think I would change a thing.

[LynnJuniper]

harharhar *points up* good luck flying with bird wings attached to your back. Its not really very practical

[Eight-Bit]

LynnJuniper - 9/27/2006 8:50 AM harharhar *points up* good luck flying with bird wings attached to your back. Its not really very practical

 In response to that, I'd change my DNA to have a 747 on my back.

[crazedgoblin]

LynnJuniper - 9/27/2006 1:50 PM harharhar *points up* good luck flying with bird wings attached to your back. Its not really very practical

 what do you think shoulder blades are for

[steverimmer]

LynnJuniper - 9/27/2006  1:50 PM  harharhar *points up* good luck flying with bird wings attached to your back. Its not really very practical

Yeah it is...I'm only 5 inches tall

[lonnarin]

And I would fear ONLY Cable...

[cbnicholson]

Make the human form more adaptable on the fly.  For instance, you start running and your body responds by adding muscle fibers to your working leg muscles, increasing blood and blood vessels feeding them at the same time it dialates the bronchi and reinforces the heart, making the heart/lungs more efficient.  The longer you run the more efficient you become via changes.  True to some extent now, but with actual phyical changes accelerated.  Another example would be a sped up metabolism upon injury to the point of appearing to regenerate.

all ideas here blatantly plagerised from the Uplift War by David Brin .

[Wraithdur]

true.
become a shifter.........then you can look like scarlett johanson and scam people into paying for pictures with you!!!

[Shadowblade225]

You do realize that scientifically speaking some (albeit few) of these changes will be highly possible in the somewhat near future ^_^

[Lord of the Forest]

Yes they will, in future you will be able to pick like the eye-color of your new-born and all this stuff. Well but I wont start a discussion about all those things. But as you already said, it will be possible.

[darkstorme]

harharhar *points up* good luck flying with bird wings attached to your back. Its not really very practical

Not only is it impractical, it's insufficient.  You could have the wings of a you-sized bird, and never be able to lift off the ground unless you also had the hollow bones and low remaining muscle mass to go with it.  You'd be almost impossibly frail, save for your pectorals and associated wing muscles.  Your head would likely have to decrease in mass.. and you'd still not be very aerodynamic.  The square-cube ratio tells us that, short of magic, there are few ways to let a human fly under their own power.  (It's possible, of course... if you're in great shape, and have a hundred-foot wingspan.  But a hundred feet of wing are a little hard to hide under a jacket.  Or fit into, say, a car.[/url])

Make the human form more adaptable on the fly. For instance, you start running and your body responds by adding muscle fibers to your working leg muscles, increasing blood and blood vessels feeding them at the same time it dialates the bronchi and reinforces the heart, making the heart/lungs more efficient. The longer you run the more efficient you become via changes. True to some extent now, but with actual phyical changes accelerated. Another example would be a sped up metabolism upon injury to the point of appearing to regenerate.

The problem here, of course, is energy.  The body is not an efficient machine.  It can't use most of the fuel it consumes, and even that it can (sugars) it tends to underutilize.  More to the point, it wastes a ton of fuel on heat.  If you speed up growth/metabolism without some sort of monitoring/guiding device (ie. nanomachines, problems of their own, but we'll leave that for now), you generate a ton more heat - it'd be like being feverish the whole time.. and your body doesn't take kindly to anything burning through that much of its fuel that quickly.  While you could possibly reconfigure to use whatever fat is available, natural systems (ie. the body) aren't too picky w/r to what they burn to generate energy/grow.  So if you're rapidly building muscle fibre while running, your body would be scavenging from elsewhere.. and with every transfer of protein, still more of your energy would be lost to heat.  For 'shifters', thermodynamics would be their biggest enemy.

Bear in mind that even if you changed the DNA of every cell in your body, right now, you'd be highly unlikely to develop wings/new eyes/hollow bones (for those who want to fly).  Things like major limb development are coded for in your DNA, but only develop during your growth phase - limbs, for example, only develop before you "come online" - you're not even YOU when your arms are growing.  Changing DNA, despite what Star Trek and assorted other sci-fi shows will tell us, does not induce immediate and drastic phenotypical changes.  What it might be is immediately lethal.  Rapidly reproducing cells (bone marrow, blood cells, hair, healing wounds) would start to demonstrate the new phenotype.. at which point, your existing white blood cells, still phenotypically the same, will identify these new cells as foreign to your body, and attack them.  You'd essentially be giving yourself an autoimmune disorder.  (This is for drastic changes, of course.  Minor changes, like knocking out code for a protein that is one of the six or seven triggers for cancer, would be less likely to induce such a response.  Even so, genetic therapy is usually followed by a rigorous regime of immunosuppressants, for just this reason.)

As a "What would you change about yourself", this is all well and good, but don't say "If you could change your DNA."

That being said, I'd correct the genetic markers in my own DNA that code for myopia and astygmatism.

[silverdraco]

I want to thank nibor21 and darkstorm for there ad on to the list. I forgot about those options.

[lunchboxkilla]

I would be 2 meters tall, 2 hearts 3 lungs, one of them would let me breath in less than a 5% oxygen atmosphere, add an organ that lets my wounds heal 30X's faster than normal, Muy rib chage would fuse to gether to protect my innards from shock, have that node added that lest me go for 240+ hours with out sleep by shutting half my brain down. Oh yeah that would rock

[J-ser]

lunchboxkilla - 9/27/2006  5:29 PM

I would be 2 meters tall, 2 hearts 3 lungs, one of them would let me breath in less than a 5% oxygen atmosphere, add an organ that lets my wounds heal 30X's faster than normal, Muy rib chage would fuse to gether to protect my innards from shock, have that node added that lest me go for 240+ hours with out sleep by shutting half my brain down. Oh yeah that would rock

Ditto, but I would make myself 3 meters, and give myself another kidney and spleen, for no other reasong then to be able to brag about it.

[Shadowblade225]

lunchboxkilla - 9/27/2006 5:29 PM I would be 2 meters tall, 2 hearts 3 lungs, one of them would let me breath in less than a 5% oxygen atmosphere, add an organ that lets my wounds heal 30X's faster than normal, Muy rib chage would fuse to gether to protect my innards from shock, have that node added that lest me go for 240+ hours with out sleep by shutting half my brain down. Oh yeah that would rock

 In others words, figuratively speaking, you want to be a Klingon. Kaplah!
  Edit - minus the whole height thing.

[lunchboxkilla]

Space marine would rock a klingon with out breaking a sweat. I mean....

Look at that
http://layonaraonline.com/forums/photos/show-album.asp?albumid=119&photoid=8711