Alien Genetic Engineering [Biotech/Space]

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Enhancing the neural tissue of horses (IQ 3) to the point where it possesses average human intelligence (IQ 10). Just using human DNA or human genes is just producing a chimera

That's not what a chimera is, and the definition you're using will rule out all genetic engineering, as the primary point of genetic engineering is adding genes that are not natively part of the genome (there is some removal, but that's very limited).

[AlexanderHowl]

Originally Posted by Anthony

That's not what a chimera is, and the definition you're using will rule out all genetic engineering, as the primary point of genetic engineering is adding genes that are not natively part of the genome (there is some removal, but that's very limited).

Technically, a chimera is an organism with cells from two (or more) individuals while a hybrid is an organism with genes from two (or more) individuals, but it is functionally the same thing in GURPS (Biotech, p. 38). They do suffer from the Chimera meta-trait though (in TL8-TL9). While a human-horse chimera would be very difficult, you could do it at TL8 if you really wanted to, you would just have to be willing to accept thousands of terrifying failures to get one horrific success.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Technically, a chimera is an organism with cells from two (or more) individuals while a hybrid is an organism with genes from two (or more) individuals, but it is functionally the same thing in GURPS (Biotech, p. 38).

A hybrid has a complete chromosome set from each parent, not just isolated gene transfer. You can't do TL 8+ biotech without gene splicing.