Avoiding Intollerance in a Post-BioEngineering Setting

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by L.J.Steele

True, but mostly when you have a decent starting population of blonds so there's not much inbreeding risk. More of an issue when you've got a total population of about 10k (gene banks with more sperm/ova) and of those 10k, about 10 individuals with measurable psi

If it's a recessive, that implies about 300 people with one copy of the gene, or if it's multiple genes (one per talent) about 100 people with one copy of each gene. Unless psi itself is an inbreeding risk, this shouldn't be too hard to maintain.

[L.J.Steele]

Originally Posted by Anthony

If it's a recessive, that implies about 300 people with one copy of the gene, or if it's multiple genes (one per talent) about 100 people with one copy of each gene. Unless psi itself is an inbreeding risk, this shouldn't be too hard to maintain.

Are you assuming the psi genes were originally evenly distributed in the populace?

The GM hasn't gotten into hard numbers -- my Doc's working theory is that there's a set of genes, likely mitochondrial mutation, common to any psi with any measurable power, that allows one to spend large amounts of fatigue in a heartbeat, and then one or more genes for the various power groups. (Probably at least one per talent, possibly multiple genes involved for the rare powers.) Psi on the old world was rare, concentrated in a handful of psi-cities/group minds. Psi genetics weren't well known on the old world -- a few likely candidates had been identified. My PC has spent the last couple years in game pulling together everything we had in the databases and running tests on our 10 or so known psis to buy the Psi counterpart to Thaumatury or Knowledge Arcana.

I can run other assumptions by the GM, but with the new gene manipulation tech, it may be academic.