Epigenetics and the appearence of Schala versus Kid (a possible solution)

[rushingwind]

Even if Schala took DNA from Lavos, it doesn't mean Kid would look like Lavos. The DNA can be made recessive. 

Yes, you're right.  I didn't think of that.  Epigenetics could play in perfectly with that.

Also, since Schala supposedly "sent out her good side" in Kid, then we could allude that to infusing Kid with her essence, her soul, who knows.

Does it say that in the game (about Kid being Schala's 'good side')?  I thought it said that Kid was Schala's daughter-clone...  It has been about a year and a half since I played Chrono Cross.

[Zaperking]

It said clearly that Kid was Schala's "Daughter-clone".
But it also said that in her last ditch effort to save herself, or at least her sanity (which would be her good side before Lavos dominates her), she sent out Kid. So if that were true, then to have Kid would be meaning to saver her O_o

[rushingwind]

It said clearly that Kid was Schala's "Daughter-clone".
But it also said that in her last ditch effort to save herself, or at least her sanity (which would be her good side before Lavos dominates her), she sent out Kid. So if that were true, then to have Kid would be meaning to saver her O_o

Well, not necessarily.  In real life, good people can be consumed by hatred, rage, insanity, ect., without having to split the good part of their soul from their evil side.  Schala didn't have to split in two for her to become filled with Lavos' hatred and rage.  She just simply became consumed and overpowered with it, and became evil (and a part of Lavos).  Though whether she actually did split herself or not is anyone's guess, because the Chrono world is obviously not like real life. 

It's very possible that this is what happened in Cross--that Schala tried to go to Serge, and ended up rending herself in two, the sane half becoming Kid.  I personally hold that Schala cloned Kid and sent her to Lucca with her pendant.  Having briefly met Lucca in Zeal (presumably), Schala would have known that Lucca was an intelligent woman who might know what to do to save her, and perhaps sending a clone of herself was the only message she could compose in her compromised state.  I personally believe that Schala and Kid are still two separate people.

Now this is just my humble opinion.  I have absolutely no problem with anyone believing that Kid and Schala are the same person, or combine at the end of Cross (in fact, isn't that the case in Radical Dreamers?  I'm not sure, but I believe that I heard that in RD Kid IS Schala).  The ending of Cross is ambiguous enough that there's room for either interpretation. 

Wow, sorry for getting off topic.  *shrug*  I wish we could find someone that reads/writes good Japanese, and we could just ask Kato what his intentions were...   *sigh*

[Loki Fenrisulf]

Well, I bet I must be wrong, but this daughter/clone could not mean partenogenesis? I mean, use her DNA as source for Kid's, like a clone, but also merging two half-cells (don't know how to say in english) to make Kid's actual DNA.
A person's DNA has two lines in each cromossome, each line with a different group of genes, and the ones that are shown in the end are the dominant ones, while the recessive ones don't and in case of co-dominants they end having a third effect than if it was a pair of the same one... So Kid could have Schala's DNA as a base, without some of the dominant genes, making the recessive ones of such dominants be the ones that actually are in Kid.
Like, someone with green eyes could have two green eyes genes or a green and a blue eyes gene, in the second case making it half possible that the child could have blue eyes if the other partner had blue eyes (blue eyes only show up in a blue/blue combination, since they are the more recessive ones of eye color) or 1/4 if the other partner had green eyes also with green and blue genes. It's a biology thing, and I'm not good at explaining (specially outside my own language), but it's a pretty basic thing of genetics...

[rushingwind]

Given the in-game evidence we have, I do not believe this is the case.  (By the way, in English, it's parthenogenesis)

Parthenogenesis (more commonly known among the masses as 'virgin birth')  is asexual reproduction in which a female reproduces without the fertilization by a male.  You typically find it in flower species, insects, and a very few species of reptiles.  In a human, two of the same chromosomes will produce a female child (XX), thus any human child created through parthenogenesis will be female.  If Kid were produced this way, the genetic material in the egg would be considerably varied, Kid may not look/act/share anything like Schala at all.

There is considerable debate on whether parthenogenesis is possible in humans.  The presence of dermoid cysts in both male and female bodies seem to suggest that it might be, on some level at least.  (Dermoid cysts are malformed embryonic growths or tumors occasionally found in various parts of the body that contain teeth, hair, and various other malformed body parts.)   Since these cysts develop and grow without being fertilized, some scientists believe they speak to either a higher or lower level form of reproduction that could exist within a human being.  But at least for now, it isn't possible for a human being to reproduce all on its own--unless they are truly hermaphroditic, in which assistance from either a lab or from magic you would be able to fertilize your own embryo.  That wouldn't be parthenogenesis, just plain fertilization.  And as far as I know, there is no in-game evidence that points towards Schala being able to do that. 

Also, a child produced via parthenogenesis is quite different than a child produced through genetic cloning.  Parthenogenesis is clearly a form of reproduction, and the new organism is not a copy of the original.  If this were the case, Kid would absolutely be Schala's daughter--no doubt about it.  You could not call her a daughter-clone, because cloning would have nothing to do with it. 

There's simply no way around this.  When you throw in the word 'clone', you take the possibility of parthenogenesis out of the equation. 

[Kebrel]

Two thing just popped in to my head,
1. Is it so hard to believe that they were misusing the word Daughter-clone?
2. Lavos could vary well be parthenogenesis, as there are offspring in the year 2300A.D., then while Schala was joined with Lavos she could have used Lavos' biology to provide means to produce Kid, there has been a dog that give birth to kittens, and hornets reproduce in tree's for nutrition.

[rushingwind]

Two thing just popped in to my head,
1. Is it so hard to believe that they were misusing the word Daughter-clone?
2. Lavos could vary well be parthenogenesis, as there are offspring in the year 2300A.D., then while Schala was joined with Lavos she could have used Lavos' biology to provide means to produce Kid, there has been a dog that give birth to kittens, and hornets reproduce in tree's for nutrition.

1 - This is actually a very good point, and the answer depends on how the Japanese script reads.  If it says 'daughter' without the 'clone', then yes, the English translation of 'daughter-clone' is almost certainly incorrect and something else is at play.  If it says 'daughter-clone', then no, unless somebody screwed up in the writing department and they simply used the wrong word (which, I have a hard time believing, because most people today know what a clone is).  If someone is a clone, they are a genetic copy of the original subject.  Parthenogenesis creates a new, recombined, individual genome--a daughter, not a daughter-clone.

2 - Well, yes and no.  The possibility that Lavos uses parthenogenesis to reproduce is high, yes.  It seems that he uses some form of asexual reproduction at the very least.  However, since it is through an ovum (egg) that parthenogenesis would take place, and the human ovum cannot divide under any significant length through a similar process, then the egg that Schala would have to use would be Lavos' ovum, in which case Schala's DNA would never even enter the equation.  The very definition of parthenogenesis is that it uses one egg, and recombines the DNA accordingly, and uses no outside DNA.  If somehow she had managed to insert her own genetic material inside of Lavos' ovum, the genome would have to be modified in order to allow for the fertilization to happen in the first place.  Kid would be the genetic daughter of both Lavos and Schala (and as Zeality pointed out earlier in the thread, she would take on some of his characteristics, like spikes and such).  She wouldn't have 'just a little' of his DNA, she'd have half his DNA, cause he'd be her father.

Short of some incredible, god-like spell, Schala could not reproduce asexually using her own eggs.  In order to do so, she'd have to carry the child herself, and then continuously hold this spell for several weeks into the growth of the fetus to guide its development--maybe even longer.  And again, if she uses Lavos' eggs, it becomes something else entirely, because then Kid would have two genetic parents--Schala and Lavos.  That would be fertilization, not parthenogenesis.  I seriously doubt she had that kind of energy and time to drive into a spell.

Another option is that she inserted her own genetic material inside of an ovum, fertilizing the cell and thus cloning herself.  The cells would divide normally, and as I've said earlier in the thread, a tiny amount of genetic variation would occur as the fetus grows.  The epigenome would develop to be completely unique.  This is not the same as asexual reproduction.

By the way, the 'dog giving birth to a kitten' story is actually not true.  The dog in question gave birth to a dog with a gene mutation.  It looks like a cat, but is a dog.
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_2371905.html

[Loki Fenrisulf]

Yep, that's what I was meaning. Parthenogenesis.

What I meant was that, just as Kebrel said, the word daughter-clone was misused, but not in a bad-translation thing, but to take another sense (hence, the one of Kid was a daughter that took schala's DNA of both sides).
You have a point in her not usually beign able to do this even in this sense, but keep in mind that the male contribution to reproduction in humans - the spermatozoid - is almost completelly thrown away but for the DNA. So she would not need to a god-like spell to generate a child, only take the DNA of one of her ovums and join with the one of the other inside either of them, and them let it keep going like a usually fertilized one (I'm serious, there were once studies to make this in labs in real life).

...It was a dog with gene mutation? Really? I always thought it was actually a kitty that was "kittynapped" to be raised by the dog so the owner could pretend it was actually son of the dog...

[Chrono'99]

It could be interesting to see what the word used for "daughter-clone" was in the Japanese version of the game, especially so we can compare it with the term "bunshin" (offshoots) used in CT's Japanese version:

   And then, just as if laying eggs, it gives
   birth to its own offshoots, one after another,
   from the place I named Death Mountain.

offshoots = 'bunshin', one of those words that doesn't translate well. Sort of, but not exactly, 'clone'.

In CT's English version, the term "offshots" is not used because Belthasar uses a verb, "Lavos continues to replicate", instead. Note that this bunshin stuff isn't the same term as Lavos Spawn, which is simply Mini Lavos in the Japanese version.

[maggiekarp]

Excellent points, and I hate to detract the topic at all, but one little thing in the first post kinda irked me.

Blue hair isn't magical. There were tons of brown-haired people in Zeal (Dalton to name one), Lucca's mom has blue hair, as do many PCs in CC. It's Japanese, so they like to use funky hair colors to differentiate characters.



Back to the topic at hand! I myself like to think of it in Eva SPOILER SPOILER terms. Rei is a sorta-clone of Yui but has different hair and eyes for no particular reason(actually put in by the designers to make her look different from the rest of the cast) other than her Angel DNA. But then I'd start comparing Lavoids to Angels... and well, I think it's best to keep headaches in one series at a time.


Cool, interesting stuff here.

[rushingwind]

Excellent points, and I hate to detract the topic at all, but one little thing in the first post kinda irked me.

Blue hair isn't magical. There were tons of brown-haired people in Zeal (Dalton to name one), Lucca's mom has blue hair, as do many PCs in CC. It's Japanese, so they like to use funky hair colors to differentiate characters.

I wasn't necessarily claiming that it was (though, there is no in-game evidence to point either way).  If you reread that post, you'll see that I was discussing the the formation and evolution of Schala's epigenome in Zeal.  I suggested that her upbringing in Zeal developed her epigenome to express exotic and magical traits, and that it was possible that the gene for blue hair was located on the same gene for magical abilities.  Overall, I was merely trying to illustrate that Schala and Kid would both possess very different epigenomes, even if their basic genomes are identical.

Back to the topic at hand! I myself like to think of it in Eva SPOILER SPOILER terms. Rei is a sorta-clone of Yui but has different hair and eyes for no particular reason(actually put in by the designers to make her look different from the rest of the cast) other than her Angel DNA. But then I'd start comparing Lavoids to Angels... and well, I think it's best to keep headaches in one series at a time.

I don't really know anything about this to reply with.    Sorry. 

It could be interesting to see what the word used for "daughter-clone" was in the Japanese version of the game, especially so we can compare it with the term "bunshin" (offshoots) used in CT's Japanese version:

   And then, just as if laying eggs, it gives
   birth to its own offshoots, one after another,
   from the place I named Death Mountain.

offshoots = 'bunshin', one of those words that doesn't translate well. Sort of, but not exactly, 'clone'.

In CT's English version, the term "offshots" is not used because Belthasar uses a verb, "Lavos continues to replicate", instead. Note that this bunshin stuff isn't the same term as Lavos Spawn, which is simply Mini Lavos in the Japanese version.

Yes, I agree, we need to know what the Japanese term is to really get anywhere.

Yep, that's what I was meaning. Parthenogenesis.

What I meant was that, just as Kebrel said, the word daughter-clone was misused, but not in a bad-translation thing, but to take another sense (hence, the one of Kid was a daughter that took schala's DNA of both sides).

Taking Schala's DNA from both sides and then being born as usual would make Kid a daughter--not a daughter-clone. She would possess an entirely unique DNA than Schala.  If she's not an exact genetic replica Kid is not a clone.  If Schala took two of her ova and combined them, this is asexual reproduction and creates a new, unique genome. 

I mean, there are several species of insects that do this, but we don't say that the insects clone themselves, do we?  No, they create new, varied individuals that adapt to their environments.  Therefore, if Kid is produced in this way, she is a daughter, and is in no way a clone.

You have a point in her not usually beign able to do this even in this sense, but keep in mind that the male contribution to reproduction in humans - the spermatozoid - is almost completelly thrown away but for the DNA. So she would not need to a god-like spell to generate a child, only take the DNA of one of her ovums and join with the one of the other inside either of them, and them let it keep going like a usually fertilized one (I'm serious, there were once studies to make this in labs in real life).

True, but this would still make Kid a daughter, not a daughter-clone.  I don't mean to sound like a broken record, here, but a clone is a genetic replica.  It doesn't matter that Kid was produced by Schala's DNA alone.  If she was produced in this manner, the genome has been recombined and is not the same anymore...and unless it is exactly the same, Kid's not a clone.  And the game clearly states that she is a daughter-clone.  You can't have half a clone, or a sorta clone.  Someone is either a clone or they're not.

But this relies on the assumption that the Japanese version also says 'daughter-clone'.  It is very, very possible that the term was either misused or mistranslated in English.

[Kyronea]

Could be that she's just a clone but was meant spiritually as her daughter. In essence, Schala is considering her a daughter even though she's a clone.

[Chrono'99]

Could be that she's just a clone but was meant spiritually as her daughter. In essence, Schala is considering her a daughter even though she's a clone.

It could be. After all Square is used to designing weird relations between clones/parents/children (see all the clones of Sephiroth or Genesis in Final Fantasy VII, and all the people claiming Jenova to be their mother...).

[Loki Fenrisulf]

Rushingwind, you aren't sounding like a broken record, you just don't get what I meant. I meant the term used was this one to give the meaning of parthenogenesis, since it would mean using only Schala's DNA to create her daughter, meaning the "clone" part would be just symbolic. In other words, the clone there wasnt meaning to be actual clone, just to mean she has Schala's DNA in both sides unlike an usual daughter who would require a father's one, in other words, the "clone" was used there symbolically (the exact opposite of Kyronea's idea, if you still don't get what I mean).


By the way, the theory someone gave about she beign clone because she used Schala's DNA at the time but a daughter because not actually her usual DNA but had a little of Lavos, that was quickly revoked (is this the word) by Kid not having spikes... If you notice on the opening movie (before the "press start" screen), when she is facing the sea, we can notice two lighter marks near the elbow of each arm, just like the ones on the face. The ones of the face could be makeup for not beign as easilly recognizable when wearing other clothes and without it, but since I doubt she would need makeup there for wathever reason and they are too equal and symetric to be usual scars, they could be scars of where the spikes were removed.

[Kebrel]

I had the same thoughts as Loki Fenrisulf. And as much as I hate this comparison it like naruto's lines on his face and the whiskers of the Nine tailed fox.