Hi all! Thanks for building this amazing forum - I've enjoyed all the awesome content here. Sorry about the weird formatting below!
I finally have my own two cents to add; it has to do with the "twist" of DNA. A curious thing is that the Sacrifice Engineer's DNA was shown with a chirality (handedness, or direction of twist) that's inverted compared to ours. Ours is right-handed, which means it has the same threading as a traditional screw that you twist clockwise to go "in". I'm pretty sure the Engineer's DNA was backwards and left-handed. Check this out for a visual comparison: http://tinyurl.com/6scdr3l The prospect of life that's a mirror image on the molecular level is sort of a fun sci-fi one: the two varieties of organism (e.g. human & Engineer) be absolutely indistinguishable on the surface (and maybe even in a DNA comparison that grants a "100% match, more on that below) but you would not be able to utilize the nutrients in food from the wrong chirality and you wouldn't be able to reproduce with someone of the opposite chirality. So if these guys were identical to us but flipped on the atomic level... that's sort of a neat idea. The black goo (in the first scene at least) could act as a molecular Rosetta Stone that flips between chiralities. Now I don't know if this is all a slight goof-up that I'm over-interpreting, but I think their backwards (left-handed) DNA had righted itself after the digestion and upon reassembly. I need to see that scene again (if someone could post a screencap it would help!). That would be great but there's absolutely no reason to expect that level of thought to be put into something that even scientists mindlessly flip (in art/figures) all the time.
Regarding whether this would negate the perfect match: if they did a mass-based analysis or a digest that picked up just the bases themselves (they are not chiral / flat) or a karyotype then both genomes would appear identical... if they tried sequencing their genome using currect technology then yes, it would not work since it'd be a FAIL upon contact with the our-chirality enzymes. They did have a fucking DNA MICROSCOPE which is absolutely hilarious and awesome and I want one, so maybe they could have seen it with that. All said: the Engineers' DNA is backwards and I'm still wondering if it's a flub or a stroke of genius.
Please help: if anyone could post a screen-grab of the post-reassembly helix that is shown very briefly, I'd really appreciate it. It'll clarify if they goofed up on all the representations DNA or if they deliberately inverted it as part of the goo-induced digestion. Thanks.
I finally have my own two cents to add; it has to do with the "twist" of DNA. A curious thing is that the Sacrifice Engineer's DNA was shown with a chirality (handedness, or direction of twist) that's inverted compared to ours. Ours is right-handed, which means it has the same threading as a traditional screw that you twist clockwise to go "in". I'm pretty sure the Engineer's DNA was backwards and left-handed. Check this out for a visual comparison: http://tinyurl.com/6scdr3l The prospect of life that's a mirror image on the molecular level is sort of a fun sci-fi one: the two varieties of organism (e.g. human & Engineer) be absolutely indistinguishable on the surface (and maybe even in a DNA comparison that grants a "100% match, more on that below) but you would not be able to utilize the nutrients in food from the wrong chirality and you wouldn't be able to reproduce with someone of the opposite chirality. So if these guys were identical to us but flipped on the atomic level... that's sort of a neat idea. The black goo (in the first scene at least) could act as a molecular Rosetta Stone that flips between chiralities. Now I don't know if this is all a slight goof-up that I'm over-interpreting, but I think their backwards (left-handed) DNA had righted itself after the digestion and upon reassembly. I need to see that scene again (if someone could post a screencap it would help!). That would be great but there's absolutely no reason to expect that level of thought to be put into something that even scientists mindlessly flip (in art/figures) all the time.
Regarding whether this would negate the perfect match: if they did a mass-based analysis or a digest that picked up just the bases themselves (they are not chiral / flat) or a karyotype then both genomes would appear identical... if they tried sequencing their genome using currect technology then yes, it would not work since it'd be a FAIL upon contact with the our-chirality enzymes. They did have a fucking DNA MICROSCOPE which is absolutely hilarious and awesome and I want one, so maybe they could have seen it with that. All said: the Engineers' DNA is backwards and I'm still wondering if it's a flub or a stroke of genius.
Please help: if anyone could post a screen-grab of the post-reassembly helix that is shown very briefly, I'd really appreciate it. It'll clarify if they goofed up on all the representations DNA or if they deliberately inverted it as part of the goo-induced digestion. Thanks.