We are all mutants

I have a good feeling that many of us will not really think twice before we say yes to meeting a mutant if it involved Wolverine, specifically if he came in the form of Hugh Jackman. I know I wouldn’t. Imagine a male chef who was a mutant in the way that Wolverine was. There would be no need to get those expensive kitchen tools, as you would have living food processor-cum-Swiss Army Knife, and yes, he does not look bad at all.

But in reality, we squirm, cringe or laugh at people or other animals with genetic disorders caused by unusual mutations in their genes. But we should really kick ourselves when we do because in truth, we are all mutants. In fact, we should be thankful we are all mutants because if not, we will spend most of our waking hours trying to tell each other apart. We are the way we are, slightly different from our parents and other family members and a bit more from others who are not our relatives, because of differences in our genes. These differences are caused by changes and these changes are called “mutations.” “Change” here refers to what happens to the A-T-C-G — the only letters in the alphabet of the biological narrative that you are. To “mutate” means a letter in the sequence you inherited from your parents has been added, or it is missing or its order has changed.

Most mutations do not really affect us in a way that could be troubling to our health. But nature, while it has a general pattern of producing human beings and other creatures, does stray from the pattern. These “strays” translate into the form of changes in the DNA. But since nature invented this system of giving us pairs of chromosomes which therefore gives us pairs of DNA sequences (genes), in many cases, if one copy of our gene spells trouble, the other copy that is working fine would be the “manual” that the cell will follow. But some instructions are such bureaucrats in a way that they will not perform properly if they do not have two working copies. This means that if even just one copy of the gene is “garbled,” cells would no longer know what to do. If cells no longer understand the sequence, then it could cause problems in the way your organs develop or function. Troubling as this is, this is nature at work, experimenting on what happens if it tweaks a letter here or there once in a while.

These mutation cases with severe effects on health are rare, that is why most of us who are from the “normal” mold behave like idiots when we are faced with other beings who look very different from us. We say things like that person must be under a curse or that his or her mother must have fallen in love with a fish when she was pregnant with him or her. Worse, we can be cruel to them by assuring them that the heavens must have a reason (albeit a mysterious reason) for making their lives miserable. Their only “mistake” is being the unwilling venue for a “change” in the biological sequence. We “normal” people can be such self-righteous idiots.

The common misperception is that when you say “genetic,” it means anything that you can blame it on your parents. This is not exactly true. Your genes could undergo mutations long after you have been born. These mutations are those that could be triggered by the environment (and its twin which is your lifestyle) and if you need a name for it, they are called “spontaneous mutations.” These changes, unless they are also present in your egg and sperm cells, are not passed on to your offspring. Only those “mutations” in your egg and in your sperm cells are what you can pass on to your children. This means that no matter how much oral whitening substance you take to make your skin fairer, your kids (thank goodness) will not inherit those “whitened” genes or your disdain for melanin (the pigmentation that colors your skin).

But Wolverine, sexy though as his mutations are, is not within reach of our biological pace. It took us over six million years since we split from our shared ancestor with chimpanzees to come up with Homo Sapiens, this current version of humans which is only about 200,000 years old. Since then, we generally have had the same five-digit hands with fingernails on top of our fingers growing at a pace independent of our rage. Wolverine, on the other hand, gets upset and you have animantium (an element found only in the comic version of the Periodic Table of elements) claws rising from this gorgeous Swiss Army Knife. But if it counts at all, at the very least, I consider Wolverine an excellent literary answer to calls for human males to be better at multi-tasking. 

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