The Na'vi DNA contreversy

[ToktorGrace]

Okay, so as a complete nerd for both Avatar and biology, and since Ive been writing a fanfiction about Grace Augustine, which has dealth a lot with sciency stuff, I found this little article in the pandorapedia archives. The part in bold is the part you need to look at closely.

The Avatar Program was originally intended to create mine workers who did not need environmental protection systems and could eat Pandoran foodstuffs. But the cost of the mental link system remained too high for the numbers needed. Avatars are now used only for field work and, when the opportunity arises, to interact with the Na'vi, to study them and to study the Pandoran ecosystem. It was hoped that the avatars could act as unofficial ambassadors, but Na'vi have for the most part viewed these hybrid creatures with a mix of contempt and mistrust.
The cloned avatar has the body structure and physiology of a Pandoran native. However, adding the human genes necessary to create the mental linking ability to the avatar's genetic makeup altered the anatomy to the extent of producing five digits (different from the normal four on a Na'vi) on the hands and feet, and reducing the size of the eyeballs. The reason for this is not yet known.

The Avatar Program was initiated to improve communication with the Na'vi, the intelligent humanoid inhabitants of Pandora. Human volunteers are paired with avatars, which are artificially created human/Na'vi hybrids controlled by persona projection technology. While the human controller remains in a sleep-like state in a psionic link unit, his or her personality inhabits and completely controls a custom-made Na'vi body.

The link is total; the human believes he is actually inhabiting the Na'vi body, with all senses, reflexes and bodily functions fully operational. The avatar body, having been grown in an amnio tank with the help of growth accelerants, has no personality of its own and is inert (except for basic autonomous functions) when not under human control.

Each avatar is specially made using genetic information from its human controller and despite obvious differences in size and physiology is equivalent to its controller's twin. This genetic matching is necessary to allow morphic projection to operate on the alien body; attempts to use unmatched bodies have invariably failed.

Originally part of RDA's Na'vi outreach program instigated at the behest of Earth government authorities, the Avatar Program has moved from being a poorly-defined xenobiological experiment controlled by Earth-based bureaucrats, ivory-tower academics and populist politicians to become a tightly-managed engineering project incorporating the most advanced technology from RDA's labs.

The existence of the Na'vi was the most surprising discovery on Pandora. For theoretical reasons, intelligent life was not expected to be found here. Given the known age of the galaxy and the relatively brief period since the evolution of man, it was assumed that any alien intelligence would be far older and more sophisticated than us, would have an advanced technological civilization and probably not be humanoid. Thus the discovery of jungle-dwelling neolithic humanoids was not anticipated.

Under strong pressure from the UN, scientists and the general public, the RDA agreed to set up a program to enhance communications between humans and Na'vi. At first this consisted solely of an Indigenous Terrain program to study Na'vi culture and language and to attempt to establish communication between man and Na'vi.

But practical difficulties soon showed a need for a more profound means of communication between the human and Na'vi species. RDA research had already established the possibility of direct mental communication between humans, and RDA scientist Dr. Cordell Lovecraft was given the task of carrying his "Dark Dreamer" project, which sought to transmit mental processes – "thoughts" – to humans at a distance, to interspecies communication.

Initial dissection of Na'vi specimens found that although Na'vi show a surprising degree of external convergent evolution, internally they are quite different from humans. The Na'vi brain in particular, with its external tendrils and three-lobed structure was a daunting obstacle.

Building on work with brain-wiped primates and condemned criminals, Dr. Lovecraft was able to establish that full sensory bonding could be established between human twins, human-animal hybrids that shared common DNA, and human-Na'vi hybrids with common genetic blueprints.

Since Na'vi don't use DNA or RNA to carry their genetic information, producing a 'translation table' that matched DNA with NVTranscriptase closely enough to allow a level of morphic resonance strong enough for communication to occur required months of computer time and multiple failed experiments, some of which caused irreparable trauma to volunteer subjects.

But eventually the Avatar Program succeeded in producing the first viable hybrids between completely unrelated species – a considerable achievement since, as Dr Lovecraft remarked, humans are far more closely related genetically to garden slugs than to Na'vi.

With the help of psionic amplification, and thanks to customized reception nodes grown into avatar brains from their earliest blastomere stage of development, human drivers can now operate their avatars at distances of tens of kilometers.

Owing to poor measurable outcomes in the field, the Indigenous Terrain program and the Avatar Program were eventually merged, with only limited informal research still conducted into Na'vi culture by human avatar operators. Currently avatars are mainly used for reconnaissance, liaison and exploration, but if native Na'vi are recruited into the mining workforce it is anticipated that more avatars will be needed for supervision and policing.

Dr. Lovecraft has been nominated for multiple Nobel prizes in biological sciences, but the nominations have invariably been withdrawn following protests from human rights organizations, the UN Pan-Faith Council and animal rights activists.

Now, Ive taken general chemistry in college so far, and am now in a cellular/molecular biology class. Ive been reading about RNA, DNA and the "beginnings of life" theories on Earth, and Im wondering if any of the rest of you science sorties have formulated your own opinions on this matter (or now that you have seen this article, what you think about it)?

Im sort of postulating that there was another form of nucleic acid that is being used by the creatures and life on Pandora, and for humans to make "hybrids" they had to manufacture a molecule that resembled both the DNA sequence and the NVT sequence.

[Nyx]

This has been bugging me too, for quite a while. Is there more info on this NVTranscriptase? I mean, is that their version of DNA? It's weird that it would end in -ase because that implies that it's an enzyme, which would make it more of a helper-molecule.

I haven't formed a good theory yet because I still need some info, but I guess that if they made a new molecule which would be somewhere between DNA and the na'vi equivalent, that could work, and they could pretty much pick and choose the traits. But the problem here would be that we've heard of Jake and Neytiri having a kid (okay, not too sure about how true that is, but still), and if that's so then this new molecule would still have to be compatible with the na'vi. And since it'd be a third take on DNA, I doubt it'd be compatible with anything and there'd be no half-na'vi, half-uniltìrantokx kids.

Maybe they translated the human genes to na'vi and made a new body from that data, using their version of DNA (if this is NVTranscriptase or whatever). But this still bugs me, just like with the language, you wouldn't be able to translate word for word, or gene for gene. And since the two species are that different, how did they know what corresponds to what?

Hehe, the scientist in me wants more details!

['Oma Tirea]

Awesome insight....

Hehe, the scientist in me wants more details!

Teng XD

[ToktorGrace]

Part of the problem Im having with it is Im trying to make it be realistic in my mind... I mean, its not like Pandora has totally new elements in its atmosphere - its the same building blocks we have here.

In several experiments in which scientists began to try figuring out the "origins of life" some of the first bio molecules that would show up were usually amino acids/proteins and nucleic acids. So far RNA was seen to self-replicate, under conditions that were present in pre-biotic Earth, so the Na'vi not even having RNA as a base makes it really difficult for me to ponder this Im getting this information from the second chapter of general biology book for my college introductory course too, so it's not even that cutting edge. I wish Cameron had more information on this public/thought or consulted with scientists.

Yeah, and the kid thing would basically be impossible, unless the manufactured molecule was a NVT-based molecule that was using traits from the human's DNA, instead of DNA that grabbed traits from the Na'vi's genetic code.

[Nyx]

It could be that they just don't call it RNA because it doesn't use ribose as a backbone. But that doesn't sound like enough to make such a big deal out of, especially since that's probably nitpicking to anyone who isn't a chemist.

There was a question related to this one among those 20 that were sent to Cameron ages ago. I wonder if he's looked at that document.

(Off topic: You know how RNA took care of the jobs of both DNA and proteins at first? There's a joke on that in one of my books: which came first, DNA or proteins? )

[ToktorGrace]

It could be that they just don't call it RNA because it doesn't use ribose as a backbone. But that doesn't sound like enough to make such a big deal out of, especially since that's probably nitpicking to anyone who isn't a chemist.

There was a question related to this one among those 20 that were sent to Cameron ages ago. I wonder if he's looked at that document.

(Off topic: You know how RNA took care of the jobs of both DNA and proteins at first? There's a joke on that in one of my books: which came first, DNA or proteins? )

Yeah the "chicken egg" / " DNA proteins" thing was answered by that, that RNA self-replicated for a while on pre-biotic Earth - so I was thinking "Oh! maybe its that the Na'vi just use RNA!" ... then it said they didnt use either...  Though the ribose backbone might be a good theory.

Someone else recently pointed out to me that Jake says in the movie its a hybrid of "Human DNA and the DNA of the natives"... and I just re-checked the ASG and its decidedly vague about the genetic material debate.

I would love Cameron to answer this one - actually if I could only ask him one question this might be it xD Or maybe I should just try to find any scientists who helped him with the movie and ask them if they know. 

[Kerame Pxel Nume]

If I had to develop this kind of adaption, translation, whatever you want to call it, I'd start by the following:

The DNA is not just some kind of blueprint. It's more like a computer environment. Well, not just like, it actually is. You can use DNA to do computations, and by the set of computations possible you can show that DNA is turing complete. So you may perfectly well consider the information of a DNA sequence a program. A program consisting of thousands of subroutines, and subroutines of subroutines.

It is very likely that any form of alien genome also can be understood as program of a turing complete set. Turing complete sets have an interesting property: Turing complete sets can be mapped bijectively, i.e. every construct of one set can be expressed by an equivalent construct of the other set.

The rest is clear: First you'd have to find out how alien genetics work, i.e. the biochemistry, how information is encoded, all the stuff we've done since DNA was discovered. But we'd have an advantage: We've already done one time, so we know what kind of things were looking for. And although every alien genetics will be completely different from what we know, we know the basic principles and ideas we used to analyze our thing, thus largely boosting any xenobiology/xenogenetics.

At some point we'd know our DNA and the alien one so well, that we could translate the programming or parts of it from our genom into the alien genome. It would of course clash violently if done too much on low level, but if the layer would be at a high enough level (think of scripting language vs. assembly) it could work with some targeted modifications.

Of course we still don't know our DNA, the proteom and biochemistry well enough to even start doing such things here and now. But we're learning at an almost frightening rate*. Just today I had a book in my hands, printed in 2006, where some of it's content about genetics have been radically refined within the last 2 years.

*and it's a pity, companies like Monsanto, Unilever, BASF and the like are manipulating plants without having a clear idea what's going on and extremely crude methods (just read about a thing called gene gun - this is like accesorizing a house using a howitzer, you don't know what ends up where, and so may mix a fragment of "everday household cleaning helpers" in a cookbook, possibly resulting in a deadly poison if you follow the "recipe") and then delivering parts to our dishes which now may produce toxic substances (well actually they do, a plant that's producing a toxin making it resistant from certain insects will not only poison the insects but also us if we eat it - that's the main reason why naturally toxic plants produce poison: To prevent themself from being eaten).

[Kactima]

My theory: NVTranscriptase is split like this: Na'vi Transcriptase, which in other words is the Na'vi have a genetic makeup of Transcriptase which make no sense because transcriptase is the enzyme that copies RNA to DNA. If na'vi are an organism they are bound to have RNA, DNA, and or TNA to carry genetic info. and if the na'vi run off transcriptase, there would be no way to create a Na'vi-human Hybrid

[Human No More]

I'd say that if not specifically DNA, Na'vi have a very similar analogous structure (using different base pairs perhaps (e.g. RNA is essentially the same as DNA but Thymine is replaced), or something other than phosphates for structure) which carries the genetic information.

My guess is that NVTranscriptase is an artificial enzyme which is actually used to convert DNA sequences as part of the process and not a finished product (similar to helicase during mitosis when DNA is duplicated), which is simply used as one stage in inserting the required human DNA to create avatars.

[ToktorGrace]

@ HumanNoMore: That would be logical - and would go along with what Nyx said earlier, regarding how maybe its a different molecule similar to DNA acting as information storage with possible the same or different base pairs.

Random thought: IF the Na'vi use DNA (or something very much analogous to it) I wonder if they are like mammals (with XX or XY determining gender) or like birds (ZZ or ZW). Would be interesting if the sex chromosomes in female Na'vi determined sex of the children instead of how in humans it's the male.

[Nyx]

Random thought: IF the Na'vi use DNA (or something very much analogous to it) I wonder if they are like mammals (with XX or XY determining gender) or like birds (ZZ or ZW). Would be interesting if the sex chromosomes in female Na'vi determined sex of the children instead of how in humans it's the male.

I don't think that would make any difference (except for what's in those chromosomes), but it would be a neat way to make them different from humans. But then again, they could have an entirely different way of determining sex, there are some funky things out there.

[ToktorGrace]

I don't think that would make any difference (except for what's in those chromosomes), but it would be a neat way to make them different from humans. But then again, they could have an entirely different way of determining sex, there are some funky things out there.

True it wouldn't change much, but would make it interesting XD

As cool as it would be, I highly doubt the Na'vi ever spontaneously change sex as happens with some Terran animals XD though that would be pretty hilarious if Jake found out about that after his transformation. *teehee*

[Nyx]

Hrh that would be hilarious to see! But I didn't mean that they'd change just like that, there are other more rare chromosome combinations. For example the Platypus (admittedly a weird creature in general) uses XYXYXYXYXY for males and 10 X chromosomes for females (okay, that's a form of XY but maybe you get what I mean).

[ToktorGrace]

Hrh that would be hilarious to see! But I didn't mean that they'd change just like that, there are other more rare chromosome combinations. For example the Platypus (admittedly a weird creature in general) uses XYXYXYXYXY for males and 10 X chromosomes for females (okay, that's a form of XY but maybe you get what I mean).

Huh thats really interesting! I see... what happens if mutation occurs and you accidentally get a Y thrown in there? (we're doing genetics intro right now in my Bio class, so Im not fully informed on everything yet!)

[Human No More]

A mutation in that scale is so unlikely as to be impossible, mutations only change a very small part of a chromosome.

[ToktorGrace]

A mutation in that scale is so unlikely as to be impossible, mutations only change a very small part of a chromosome.

You're right, I should have said  "aneuploidy" not mutation. I see there could be a LOT of room for error considering that aneuploidy occurs in humans 10-30% of the time and we only have XY to worry about.

[Nyx]

A mutation in that scale is so unlikely as to be impossible, mutations only change a very small part of a chromosome.

You're right, I should have said  "aneuploidy" not mutation. I see there could be a LOT of room for error considering that aneuploidy occurs in humans 10-30% of the time and we only have XY to worry about.

Maybe the amount the platypus uses has to do with making sure that errors can be corrected, maybe some of those serve as backups in way, I don't really know, but they seem to be doing fine. Note that the gene which determines maleness in humans (the SRY gene, on the Y chromosome) isn't there in the platypus. I haven't figured out how it works there except for some things saying it's a bit similar to the ZW system.

Also, I'm sorry for going from na'vi to platypus, that was a weird shift

[Human No More]

Srane, weird indeed. This thread certainly got derailed
Well, in humans, an extra X or Y chromosome usually causes severe genetic disease if the foetus survives (which is not usual).

The Na'vi wouldn't change genders or anything, AFAIK only some species of fish do that. After all, the Na'vi mate for life, and their behaviour is closes to Earth mammals (see the large discussion about whether Na'vi are mammals or not, where I say they are).

[ToktorGrace]

I was mostly musing (about the gender thing)  - and since its my thread, I declare derailment appropriate in this case It was still on roughly the same subject eh?

I've been watching the mammal debate myself. I'd say they'd be under a different classification than terran mammals, but as far as physiology and such, they seem to be pretty similar. (maybe xenomammalians is what they can be called?)

[Nyx]

They do seem very similar indeed, but they could still have some weird stuff going on with the same (or at least a similar) end result. So their DNA could be built from other bases and the information wouldn't have to be stored in the same way as it is with us, but it can't be all too crazy since the systems are apparently compatible.