What is a Mutation? A Mutant? The series gets it wrong, wrong,wrong
Mutant X presents a good deal of science…just plain wrong.
With a small amount of effort, Tribune could have presented extrapolations of RealScience and spared themselves the embarrassment of absurd, meaningless technobabble, and silliest of all, the obvious truth that nobody writing for the show understands what a mutation is or what a mutant is. This material is typically covered in the curricula of American middle schools in an accessible, descriptive manner requiring no math, so it is hard to grasp why a nonsensical approach was adopted.
First, you must understand something about the physical structure of a DNA molecule. A full description could go into much detail about chemical structure, bond angles, and more, but none of that is required by a non-specialist. Most simply put, DNA is a polymer, a long, threadlike molecule built up from smaller, identical repeating units. Only four different repeating units occur in DNA no matter what species is involved. All DNA consists of two of these ‘threads’ twisting about one another, chemical mirror images, forming a double helix.
Second, the order in which these four different, repeating units are linked in a strand of DNA give DNA its functionality, since this order dictates the formation of other molecules will be made (the process is complex, but this is the essence of it). If the order of these four unique units is changed, so are the other molecules that are formed. A mutation occurs when the order is changed. A mutant organism is the bearer of a mutation.
Many processes can change the order of unique repeating units, such as radiation, specific chemicals, or the deliberate insertion of a section of DNA from another organism. Every individual organism possesses some mutations; few such alterations result in obvious changes, but some do, such as a flower with pigmentation not seen before, or a typically straight-haired animal having curly hair instead.
The Genomex mutants pass their traits on to their progeny, which means they had to be created by deliberate tampering with the mother’s eggs or very early in the existence of a fertilized egg or embryo. Unless this process happens very early in the development of an organism, the changed DNA will not be present in every cell, and the chances of it occurring in eggs or sperm decrease.
The way some Genomex ‘mutants’ are described they are actually chimeras, individuals with foreign tissue grafted on much later. Such individuals will not pass their qualities on, and they are NOT mutants, despite the scripts saying otherwise.
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