Thread: GURPS Uplift
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Old 05-19-2011, 12:59 PM   #48
Magehound
 
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Puerto Rico, U.S.A.
Default Re: GURPS Uplift

Quote:
Originally Posted by stefanj View Post
I forget the figure, but the "computers" (really, specialized artificial gonad extensions) would store the DNA of many thousands of individuals. The gland-extension would randomly create a haploid (?) set for sperm or eggs based on these, then hand them off to the original equipment for creating the actual cells.

This would be a very handy thing for biological colonists (and their livestock) in any setting!
I sort of took it a step further for mine, and made them programmable but by an external database of DNA codes. So, you have a cow (a nice, placid, heavy-milker Holstein), but you need some foundation beef cattle stock (say Angus). The external database would already have stored the sequences of enough Angus DNA to let you do that, and the Holstein would basically serve as a surrogate for "pure-bred" Angus calves, and any other kind of cattle-type animal (such as bison and yak), without the hassle of trying to work out embryo transfer or having to have a ridiculously wide pool of surrogate breeding animals to begin with.

But let me know if that's totally off from what you had in mind.
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