The Mutant Gene

[Mel *]

The Mutant Gene

Scientific Name: Mutant, mutagen 
Common Name: Gifted, superhuman

Mutants are called mutants because of a mutation that has occurred in their DNA structure, changing it -- not much, but enough to give them the ability of superhuman abilities. The DNA is different in everyone, as every power out there are different and completely individual. From the way the DNA behaves, and it's physiology. A change in an organism's DNA can cause changes in all aspects of its life. Mutations are essential to evolution; they are the raw material of genetic variation. Without mutation, evolution could not occur. So, you could think of this mutation as an evolved form of humans. There is an deoxyribonucleic acid molecule that encodes their genetic coding and allows them to have powers.

This DNA -- as most DNA travel through bloodlines, meaning that if two mutants has a child, there is going to be a high chance of said child being a mutant themselves. As always, nature doesn't always play nicely, and there has been instances where two mutants produce a non-powered human, but this isn't very likely to happen, as this DNA is incredibly aggressive and dominant. However, the chance of producing a mutant child is less if only one of the parents are a mutant, and even less likely if none of them are. However, this doesn't mean it's impossible, as it could be enough that someone, somewhere in the family tree is or was a mutant.

The mutant gene also seems to be a lot more common in females, than males. The reason behind this, is yet undiscovered, and the researchers are still trying to figure this out. One of the theories are that this difference comes from the difference in the X and Y chromosomes, but nothing has been proved thus far; basically, they have a theory that the female chromosome the mutant gene and let’s it blend with their DNA much faster and easier than what the male chromosomes do.

The mutated gene is different from ability to ability, which makes it easier to separate the different types of power, which means that the various different abilities can be identified by someone’s mutated DNA structure -- as long as you know exactly what you’re looking for. To those who don’t, it will simply show up as a DNA irregularity -- basically, a mutated gene that the untrained eye doesn't know what does -- or what it changes when looking at the whole picture. How many genes (or how few) that are affected, and how they look also depends entirely on the power, so there's really no set answer to this question yet. What seems to be a little tricky though, is that the mutant gene is present within mutants who have yet to manifest, but it does not become active until they reach puberty, and encounter their first manifestation.

When it comes to how long mutants have been around, no one really knows. Maybe they have been around from the very beginning, or maybe mutants evolved during the past 2-300 years. The mutant population covers about 0.2% of the entire world's population, so although this is a gene that travels through the family tree, mutants are generally very rare.

The school however has been around since the 1800 century, but the study of mutants, and the side-effects/genetics/DNA is fairly recent, hence why there isn't too much information surrounding it. These people learn new things about the mutation every day, and there's new discoveries and information produced all the time. Mutants have only recently started to understand how the DNA operates.

You might wonder why the research is as new as it is, because considering how long mutants might have been around, someone would have researched them before, right? Well, mutants have been researched for a long time, BUT it was kept extremely under the table and top secret -- even from before the Government actually knew about the existence of mutants. Once the Government got their hands on the information however, the information was stored away, and the few known mutants were stopped from continuing their research.

When SPECTRE was "born", they got their hands on the information from a Government official, and that is how the organization learned as much about mutants as they did. However, when SPECTRE was brought down after their attack on Bellefonte, the information was lost with them, and the government OK’ed all future research of mutants, and they had to start entirely from scratch.

The DNA experiences a base-pair change in its gene of an organism. Although not all mutations have a noticeable phenotypic effect, the common usage of the word "mutant" is generally a pejorative term only used for noticeable mutations (though, in this case; people with abilities).