#*character overview | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sariels-world-ella · 6 months

Text

Tried to make a reference sheet kinda for Sw!Fallenswap Chara, I might change Chara's timeskip age to 22-21 or something because it was a 11 year timeskip and Chara was originally 8 but looked older in this image to I changed it to ~10, maybe I should write a bunch of things about them under the cut, you know what I'll do that, some updated character overview.

Full Name: Chara Mandaleev (sometimes spelled Mendeleev) Alias: Chara, The one with the Russian accent, the b*tch who murdered Toriel, Young Mx. Mandaleev, child, kiddo, The Human/Human, Mortal Child/Mortal, The Relentless little f*cker, Annoying little sh*t, Morpa Gen (which is just Monstarian for Mortal Child, literal translation is Child of soulled-organs/Soul-Organ child/organ child of soul) Personality: Stubborn, Relentless, lively, spunky, and overall very feisty and usually very idiosyncratic. Age: ~10 (at time of falling down) 19 (currently) Date of birth: sometime in the year 2004-2006 Height: 4’11”/149.86cm (child) 6’1”/185.42cm (adult) Weight: 158 pounds / 71.6676 Kg Soul: Love Soul (+ Toriel's soul, at the end of their underground experience) Gender: Unstated. Pronouns: Any, usually uses they/them. Biological Sex: Female (Chara's biology changed after absorbing Toriel's soul so they might not technically have a biological sex anymore) Orientation: Aro-Ace Species: Human (though after absorbing Toriel's soul their biology did change and become more monster-like, so they aren't technically 100% human anymore) Race: White Ethnicity: Russian Nationality: Australian Family: Unnamed Parents and younger brother (deceased) Unknown adoptive parent Relations: Frisk Dreemurr/Angel of Darkness (Enemy/Rival) Asgore (temporary guardian), Temmie (frienemy), Hapstablook (acquaintance) Papyrus Gaster (close-Ally and former protector), Sans C. Gaster (Detested by), Asriel (Friend), Alphys Shi (former enemy made passive acquaintance), Dr. Undyne (former rival), Napstabot (Ally), Wingding Gaster/Boatman (Neutral), Toriel (current "Mentor") Backstory/lore: Not much is known about Chara Mandaleev, it is known Chara was originally from somewhere in Russia, until their family escaped to Australia from the Russian government, it’s unknown the exact reason why. Eventually, Chara’s family was tracked down by an unknown person, presumably some hitman, and caused their family car to crash, with Chara being the only survivor, Chara fled the scene but was eventually caught up to and pushed down into the underground and presumed to be dead by the person afterwards. Chara, like Horrortale Frisk, did a pacifist-neutral run but killed Toriel at the end absorbing her soul to cross the barrier, causing a long series of events to unfold, including a civil war amongst the underground itself. There is not much known about what happened to Chara afterwards within the timeskip, besides Chara became very well-known in the surface world for being the only human to come back alive from the underground, and being able to give the first description and recount of Monsterkind in the past 1,000 years, also eventually became the neighbor to Andrew Allen (HT!Aliza’s Counterpart). ----- How Absorbing a monster Soul affects a human's biology judging by what happened to Chara: Since Chara is the only one to ever absorb an monster’s soul, the effects are very little known, the known effects, judging by how it affected Chara, are;

The Human will not go through normal puberty if they haven’t already and if they are going through it, it would stop.

The Human will become sterile, and all reproductive functions will stop functioning.

They won’t produce estrogen or testosterone anymore, but their monster soul will keep the negative physical effects of that at bay, though not necessarily any possible mental effects.

The Human will continue to grow taller until age 25, if they are over that age they will retain the same height

The Human will gain the monster’s magic abilities

The Human will be eternally youthful, and stop aging at 25 if they are younger than that age. If they are over that age they will still maintain their physical appearance but their biology will behave as if they were younger, ex: they will still look 60 but they would have the biology of an healthy person in their 20s

Will be immune to bacteria and viral infections

they'll have a higher magic tolerance, and their soul won't explode from magic overcharge, or at least not easily.

Cells and their genetics will behave differently than they used to due to their DNA being mutated.

They don't seem to bleed or bleed as much when pierced.

their body will experience physical changes usually parrelling the Monster's physical traits, like if the monster has claws and sharp teeth, the human will start to grow them as well.

#undertale #undertale by toby fox #undertale au #sw!fallenswap #my au #digital art #AU Chara #Character overview #Chara AU #Swap Chara Au #chara #character reference #character info #chara dreemurr #chara undertale #UT AU #ut au art

9 notes · View notes

thewastedones · 6 months

Text

THE WASTED ONES - CHARACTER OVERVIEW.

Perchbreeze.

Warrior.

He/him, gay.

He's very nice and curious all the time, a little too curious though.. He's adventurous. Very clever and a good swimmer.

He idolizes Bloodcloak, such a cool guy wow!

Used to live with two of his friends. One day Perch and his bros went to explore and encountered a ravenous animal. Due to the unexpectedness and being caught off guard, they barely managed to escape. Perch was the only one of the three that managed to lived through the night. He was found cold and wounded, he was soon by taken in.

He contemplates a lot.

#Perchbreeze #the wasted ones #character overview #rustclan #Ooc Cheese: MY SON

8 notes · View notes

dragonkingancalagon · 6 months

Text

Allen Walker is the Best Protagonist in Manga

Allen Walker is the best protagonist in manga, for many reasons. First and most obvious is that he is one of few shounen protagonists with common sense. Unlike Midoriya from My Hero Academia, Eren from Attack on Titan, Natsu from Fairy Tail or a slew of other shounen protagonists, he is generally level-headed, practical, and if necessary, underhanded – as can be seen below: Further, Allen is a…

View On WordPress

#Allen Walker #Allen Walker D.Gray Man #best protagonist #character #character overview #character review #d.gray man #manga #protagonist

8 notes · View notes

sonic-journeyofthewind · 10 months

Text

The Deity of Time, Venice, who's currently known as Silver the Hedgehog, is prepared to explain himself! Just for a bit. He's busy, you know!

In battle, he uses his telekinesis and future sight abilities to best his foes! Is it even possible to win a fight against a deity who can see the future and act accordingly...?

Stats & Skill Samples:

HP: ★★☆☆☆ (C)

MP: ★★★★★ (S)

Attack: ★☆☆☆☆ (D)

Defense: ★★☆☆☆ (C)

Magic: ★★★★★ (S)

Resistance: ★★★★☆ (C)

Speed: ★★☆☆☆ (C)

Skill/Luck: ★★★★☆ (A)

Skill 1: “Psychic Blades” - Silver sends several sharp blades of psychic energy at his foe.

Skill 2: “Telekinesis” - Silver has the ability to move just about anything with his mind, as long as it's not more powerful than him. Or something immense like an entire planet. He can do a variety of things with this skill to support allies or ruin an enemy's day.

Combo 1: “ESP Mirage” - Silver traps the enemy in place with a crushing level of telekinesis so that Espio can unleash dozens of up-close slashes and ranged shuriken at the enemy. Once Espio's done, Silver releases the enemy in a blast of psychic energy.

#character overview #silver the hedgehog #sonic au

12 notes · View notes

under-the-blood-moonlight · 1 year

Text

ℭ𝔥𝔞𝔯𝔞𝔠𝔱𝔢𝔯 𝔒𝔳𝔢𝔯𝔳𝔦𝔢𝔴

Niqesse grew up in her families Manor in Ishgard. As a child she was often very sick due aether sickness. When she grew up Niqesse wasn't able to use aether, till a turning point in her life that she didn't understand. She was trained in different weapon types and magic, but couldn't really master any of the weapon based arts without the help of magic later on. Her preferred weapon is the Scythe. Niqesse left her home after she reached adulthood to find more knowledge, specially forbidden knowledge. At one point she stayed a while longer in Gridania and happen to cross paths with the scions and found a crystal of light. OC sheet

Razieloix was born into a wealthy family. He started his training to be a dragoon early on. As a young man he found the love of his life, Ithil. They got engaged right before Razieloix had to leave to fight in the Dragonsongwar. Back then he was already a skilled fighter, but after a longer encounter and being heavily wounded he got kidnapped by cultists who tried to summon a voidset into his corpse. The summoning went wrong and Razieloix wasn't dead, he fought his way out leaving a trail of blood behind him, but something was wrong with him. The dragoon felt a change in him and lost his the memory of the coming days. Weeks went by before he returned to his home only to find it burned down, no one left alive. Razieloix fell into a raging frenzy and went on hunting and killing dragons. Who knows how long he did this till he returned to Ishgard and rebuild what he had lost, but now under the name Wrath de Lith. OC Sheet

Corveaux was found in a coffin by Niqesse de Nox, who got a tip to check it out from her friends Kyrie & Völundr. When the young noble opened it he awoke from his slumber. Not remembering who or what he was, the only thought on his mind was aether. He and Niqesse made a pact, he became Corveaux Noucins the butler of house de Nox and the Reaper Voidsent of Niqesse. He is also one Hellsent of a Butler.

Noctis is a proud son of Garlemald, who knew quite early what he wanted. He wanted to serve the Royal Family. Noctis trained long and hard to get where he is now. A Tribunus Laticlavius, stationed to serve under Zenos yae Galvus. This was not what Noctis imagined when he finally got his promotion. He is basically cleaning after Zenos...

#character overview #Niqesse de Nox #Wrath de Lith #Corveaux Noucins #Noctis tol Luna #currently only posting my main cast - the others are on Hiatus #tw: blood #underneath this bleeding moon #long post

32 notes · View notes

ryzingentgaming · 1 year

Video

youtube

Welcome to a Honkai Star Rail character overview video for Seele!

In this video, we’ll cover Belobog’s Star of the Underworld, and her unparalleled single-target damage capabilities, versatility, skills, passive bonuses, and outstanding stats.

What makes her an essential character for players aiming to dominate the game? Come find out!

#youtube #honkai #honkai star rail #honkai: star rail #hoyoverse #mihoyo #seele #seele vollerei #honkai star rail seele #character analysis #character overview #guide #anime #gaming #pc #ps4 #ps5 #android #ios

2 notes · View notes

koraesdoodles · 2 months

Text

My baby boy turned out so handsome 😭😭😭

Facts about Devin Jha:

His character trope/role is simply "the asshole." He's fun because he says what everyone else is too scared to say!

When I was originally planning the story, I imagined him to be like a teenage Rick Sanchez from Rick and Morty.

He is used to being the smartest one in the room, but has enough street smarts to not get egotistical when someone is smarter than him. This makes him hard to manipulate.

He will always make the practical choice, the choice that will get him to where he needs to go. You cannot rely upon him to make the ethical or good choice.

Devin doesn't believe in good or bad, just self-preservation. He has never had a real family, and is wary of emotional bonds because if he cares about people, then that makes it so much harder to do what he needs to to survive.

#Devin Jha #the outcast odyssey #outcast odyssey comic #my comic #original work #original character #original art #practice makes progress guys!#look at my cute dude! I'm so proud of him!#character overview #amwriting #amdrawing #am learning honestly #I love him #He goes out of his way to be as unlovable as possible #it's a coping mechanism <3

1 note · View note

aggravateddurian · 7 months

Text

Cyberpunk RED Campaign: How to Save a Life - Setting and Characters

How to Save a Life is my Cyberpunk RED campaign, set in the early 2050s. Using my 2077 weapons homebrew conversion Dark Future Arsenal, it takes place in the Brother's Shadow timeline, and helps to set up the characters of Samurai Jack and Nightowl, as well as Nightowl's daughter, Rebecca.

Setting

Night City

Night City in the 2050s is a period of transition. The reclamation efforts are well underway, and Corpo Plaza has commenced construction, with hundreds of thousands of tonnes of irradiated rubble, soil and debris, left to wallow in state since 2023, being relocated by construction crews. The megabuildings are currently the dominant structures in the sky, as they reach towards the heavens.

The familiar streets of Night City are in flux. Modern neighbourhoods and districts constantly shift locations in the grand scheme of the city.

Foster Medical Resort

Located about 100 km off the coast of Night City, in the beautiful* Pacific Ocean lies a floating resort. Constructed by Arasaka and Foster Medical, The Resort is styled as a tropical paradise, complete with cloned palm trees and lush tropical grasses. At the heart of this manmade island, the Rod of Asclepius, a 110-story highrise hospital and administration building for Foster Medical and Arasaka's R&D division, as well as exclusive VIP landing pads for Arasaka and Foster AVs.

Protected by an AI-driven defence system, The Resort is all but impervious to anything short of a fleet of warships, or an entire air force's worth of planes. The strong defence is necessary, after all, the Resort is home to the world's bleeding edge of medical research and technology. Rich and famous people from across the globe come here to have their various ailments treated. Even ageing itself is treated here.

*May include: sentient AI attack submarines, mutant whales, sea nomad pirates and dangerous levels of pollution.

Characters

Clarissa Gutierrez – The widow of the late Ferdinand Gutierrez, founder of Wolf Media Group, one of the fastest growing alternative media outfits in the world. Since the death of her husband, the company has fallen into disarray, and competitors are now champing at the bit. She feels that if she loses the company, she will lose the last of her husband’s legacy, now that her son has been diagnosed with a rare and terminal medical condition, that will soon take him from her as well. She is desperate, and willing to resort to the worst tricks in the corpo playbook to preserve her control over Wolf Media, and save her son’s life.

Michael Gutierrez – Michael Gutierrez was a healthy teenage boy until he suddenly fell over at school, and was diagnosed with a degenerative neurological disease that has left him bedridden, and with months to live. He is incapable of doing anything for himself anymore, and needs near constant medical support to survive. His only hope is an experimental regenerative treatment by Foster Medical, a medical firm that caters exclusively to the rich and famous, but it is beyond the family’s means. A desperate mother, not eager to lose her only son, is willing to do anything to acquire this cure and save his life.

Samurai Jack – Jackson Moretz, better known as Samurai Jack, is a Santo Domingo kid born and raised. He was born in Santo, lives and works in Santo, and as he says, he’ll likely die in Santo. Jackson grew up a fan of the rock band Samurai, and idolised Johnny Silverhand, believing that he was a hero who stuck it to the corpos. Moretz collects Samurai merch, and both his personal abode, and office in the upper level of the Santo Domingo edgerunner hub, the Redline, are plastered in Samurai and Johnny Silverhand memorabilia. He got his start as a fixer organising gigs for rockerboys, and gradually diversified his portfolio into mercenary work. “SJ” is not to be trifled with, he plays things cool, but has a capacity for brutal retaliation if he feels wronged, or that he’s being manipulated.

Nightowl – Nightowl is a former corporate exec and fixer who co-owns and runs the Redline, a bar in Santo Domingo, with Samurai Jack. Distinguished by his slight frame, gaunt facial features, and seeming inability to smile. Nightowl has developed a reputation for reliability and discretion.

E1fb0i – Elfboy, stylised as E1fb0i, is Samurai Jack’s netrunner of choice. Kept on retainer by SJ, E1fb0i is enamoured with fantasy, and they are a prolific player of Elflines Online. They acquired biosculpting surgery to change their appearance to that of an elf. Rarely seen out of their customised Bodyweight Suit, and even more rarely seen outside of their netrunning den in the basement of the Redline. E1fb0i is good at what they do, otherwise Samurai Jack would’ve cut them loose a long time ago.

Rebecca (no, not that Rebecca) - Rebecca Owler, known on the NET by her handle legless_egg, is a netrunner who works for Samurai Jack and Nightowl. Injured in some unspecified incident as a teenager, she was interred in a biopod, unable to afford the treatment needed to recover. Rebecca operates out of a netrunner den in the basement of the Redline, occasionally working alongside E1fb0i.

#cyberpunk red #new cyberpunk red campaign #blog update #ttrpg #ttrpg campaign #how to save a life #character overview #setting overview

1 note · View note

luckthebard · 8 months

Text

One of the funniest disconnects with actual play to me is how much the viewers/fandoms have a much broader awareness of everyone’s mechanics than the players themselves - and often assume for some reason that all the players have that same total awareness.

Funniest examples I can think of off the top of my head are when Laura was convinced Caleb (AC 11 wizard) had a higher AC than Yasha (AC 15 Barbarian) - likely influenced by fear for Yasha in Ashley’s absence and Yasha’s position in melee meaning she was hit more by default. Another was when the entire CR crew aside from Laura revealed in the campaign wrap-up that they seem to have spent the entirety of C2 under the impression Jester had a very high Charisma score (her CHA was 12).

#not gonna main tag this as anything because it honestly is just a fascinating disconnect for me #but I don’t trust people to not be weird #I’d also love to hear any examples from other APs if anyone’s aware #I feel like this is something far more likely to happen in dense long form campaigns #than in shorter ones though #and I guess the point I’m getting at here is that fandoms often assume the players hold an all-knowing overview POV #about everyone else’s characters #and they absolutely do not

363 notes · View notes

simulation-machine · 10 months

Text

The perfect little sister that nobody knows is hella gay.

#tiffany eliza graham #cas screenshots #character overview #show your sims #sims 4

35 notes · View notes

jahiera · 7 months

Text

listen it's very. even when playing gale's romance I am guaranteed several solid cutscenes of Astarion talking about his life, his perceptions of things, his ideas; the bite scene, the after that, the talking about your companions blood, the proposition, all the little conversations about being a vampire + how to become a vampire + what life was like that have several dialogue options. whereas these same "stock" conversations with the other companions tend to have ONE, maybe two dialogues with choices following if that much (for example, with Karlach it tends to be 1. ask question 2. she answers and it ends). there's a solid foundation of pacing and work put into astarion's storyline that even without his romance, his presence WILL be felt unless you just straight up never speak to him. which is to say, that THAT writing is really good! but if they couldn't uphold that same standard of effort and time across the board and ensure all the companions have some measure of equality, theeeeeen... something shouldve been done there to make sure it was at least somewhat equal. it also sucks that gale/wyll/lae'zel/shadowheart were all received ""poorly"" in contrast to astarion during EA (or received harsher critique anyways). I still believe there was a lot of solid character work and richness to their EA personalities that I dont know totally carried over in rewrites--decreasing the amount of conflict, lessening the "flaws" of these characters--contrary to what larian says about staying true to their core ideas in some places. so it sucks that you can see how with that effort and focus, astarion's storyline really is really well done for the kind of game that it is, and no one is saying bg3 is wanting for stuff to do, but there is a clear gap in effort and time put into the other companions when they absolutely deserved just as much time and effort as astarion, and the thing is. the writer confirmed it! confirmed that more time was put into him. like cmon man

#it's just not funnyyyyy #it's extremely disappointing just in terms of Designing The Narrative that several companions got the shaft #Now of course there are lots of compounding factors here; budget; time; voice-acting and mocap; etc. all costs I Know #but it still doesn't negate that it was confirmed that at least there was a focus on him that wasnt quite there #with the others #baudelaire welch was the senior narrative designer iirc and I know crutch sucks but like. cmon #you had a job there to ensure there was some measure of equality across the cast #and this isn't even getting into halsin who I'm pretty sure was written in an afternoon with no overview of #what was being put out #ANYHOW. I love the game love the cast love the characters. I will fix the pacing. in my brain #critical /

276 notes · View notes

thewastedones · 6 months

Text

THE WASTED ONES - CHARACTER OVERVIEW.

Rattlepaw

Apprentice.

He/they, bisexual.

He is pretty confident in himself and will get the job done when told but has a very hard time paying attention to things and has a bit of a memory issue. Rattlepaw sees Bloodcloak as his father figure, like most other apprentices. He finds Rainpaw to be suspicious though for some reason.

It took him a long time to realize there was even an apocalypse as Rattlepaw was mostly sheltered throughout his life. One day their parents left and just never came back. He was found all skin and bones trying to hunt.

Rattlepaw mostly enjoys watching clouds and talking.

Rattlepaw's mentor is Centipedestar.

He'll be a warrior soon.

#the wasted ones #character overview #rustclan #Rattlepaw

8 notes · View notes

cellarspider · 2 months

Text

13/?? Science interlude!

(Previous) | (Index) | (Next)

⛬

We return to Prometheus, where I am taking a break to ramble about my job. A thing that I love. It will be a nice change. Also: weird blood!

I have been informed that some methods of accessing tumblr do not play well with long alt text rambles. To keep the flow between the main text and alt text separate, I’ll be copying the longest ones below the main text and citations. Captions that I think are going to be long enough to need this treatment will be marked with “Overflow Ramble [number]”, so they’ll be slightly easier to find. It’s not a perfect system, but Tumblr is not a perfect website.

And I am going to need the overflow space this time, because we’re getting into genetics!

After electrocuting a decapitated alien head until it exploded into a shower of green gore, the creatures that claim to be scientists stuck a bit of the goop in some sort of very science-y DNA machine, leading to this:

“Let's have a look at its DNA. Isolate the strand. Okay. Compare it to the gene sample?”

“[Overlay… Processing… Processing… DNA MATCH.]”

“Oh, my God. It's us.”

I want this preserved for posterity, because this made me absolutely hoot. They avoided fake science technobabble by going so far in the other direction that it becomes equally meaningless.

What the scene is trying to say is “this alien shares the vast majority of its genetic material with humans, indicating that they are in fact related.”

I will get to how one would actually determine that, but first: The head turned into green goop. Green goop. Humans are notably not prone to turning into green goop. Otherwise Nickelodeon would’ve probably been shut down within a week.

(Image credit: Rich Fury/KCA2021/Getty Images for Nickelodeon)

This annoyed me so much that years later, I dug up a possible explanation that backfills this with cool biology.

Humans, and almost all vertebrates have hemoglobin-filled blood. And on a tangent that I must follow: The only vertebrate that doesn’t is the icefish Channichthyidae family, commonly known as the white-blooded fish.

You’ll never guess what’s special about them.

Yes, somehow these fish manage to live without hemoglobin, their blood only having 10% of the oxygen carrying capacity of their red-blooded cousins. Hell, most of them also lack myoglobin, which stores oxygen in muscle. The loss of myoglobin isn’t just a one-off event either, genetic studies have shown that these icefish have seen four distinct branches of their family tree lose myoglobin independently of each other. They have a wild series of adaptations to permit this, but basically they were already in such cold-oxygen rich water and moving so slow that they didn’t need all that extra oxygen-having stuff. They lost it, kept going, got bigger hearts, weirder muscles, and just kept going. They’ve actually expanded their range in the past 30 million years or so!

I love them! Evolution is wild. You know what’s also wild? There’s green-blooded vertebrates. Yes. You read that right. Yes, they still have hemoglobin. What they also have are staggering levels of biliverdin, which human bodies only produce when breaking down hemoglobin–when a bruise takes on a greenish hue, it’s because the dismantling of the blood under your skin has created biliverdin. While it’s generally been thought of as just a breakdown product, some research suggests that it also has protective effects against a number of diseases. In moderation, though. If you have enough of it to actually turn a bit green, you’ve got jaundice, which is not a thing you want to have.

But for a number of fish species, bush frogs, and skinks, they have way more biliverdin.

(Austin, C. C., & Jessing, K. W. (1994). Green-blood pigmentation in lizards. Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part A: Physiology, 109(3), 619-626.)

Humans usually don’t have much circulating biliverdin at all, so the table above compares someone with untreated jaundice to a number of other species–fish with two to fourteen times that amount, and the green-blooded skinks have twenty-two times as much! These creatures have green blood and turquoise-colored bones, and we still don’t know why. Maybe it’s protection against diseases, maybe it’s protection against parasites like malaria, maybe it’s to make them really blend in with foliage. Could be all of those at once, could be none of them, we don’t know! What we do know is that, as with the icefish, the green-blooded skinks in particular have independently evolved this feature four different times. (Rodriguez, Z. B., Perkins, S. L., & Austin, C. C. (2018). Multiple origins of green blood in New Guinea lizards. Science Advances, 4(5), eaao5017.)

(https://australian.museum/blog-archive/amri-news/amri-three-tiny-green-blooded-frogs-sing-like-birds/)

(https://web.archive.org/web/20180619143048/https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2013/09/30/why-do-mysterious-lizards-have-green-blood/)

We have no mammals identified with biliverdin-filled green blood, you would need a lot of tweaks to how our bodies function to make this work. But it’s not literally impossible, like I thought in the theater! I’m quite sure the prop department didn’t do this level of research on the subject, but think about it!

I love biology! It’s! So! Weird!

And because I love biology, you’re not getting rid of me yet. My chosen field is genetics. This movie has presented me with a laughable sci-fi depiction of what we do.

So! What do we actually do, when we want to find out how related we are to another species?

I’m going to get into excruciating detail, so here’s the top-line summary: We extract the DNA, mash it up into readable little chunks, use some wicked cool machines to do the actual reading, and then we compare the target DNA with our DNA, and do some cooler stuff the movie isn’t aware of. A competent analysis would not only be able to tell you how much overlap two genomes have, but also be able to estimate how long the two species have been genetically distinct.

Is this way more than the movie needed for this plot point? Yes. But they didn’t actually have to do this at all, they could’ve just said the truth that science fiction usually ignores for budgetary reasons: “there’s no way these beings independently evolved to look so much like us, we have to be related.”

(Although even Star Trek, despite being the classic example of “putting a rubber thing on an actor’s forehead to make them an alien”, actually does acknowledge this. Precisely once. TNG s6e20, “The Chase”. It has never been mentioned again in the main line series, possibly because Rick Berman didn’t like it.)

Now. Time for me to take you all on a grand tour of DNA sequencing and phylogenetic analysis. You are all getting into the Willy Wonka boat with me. You have no choice.

So! You have a sample you’ve taken from a non-human mammal, one that’s never been genetically analyzed before. You are very lucky. You get to do fun stuff.

But before you get to sequencing, you have to purify any DNA in the sample. Your sample is full of all sorts of other biochemical gunk, and when cells are happy, DNA is packed away in the nucleus–you need to crack those open to get at the DNA.

Next, you need to break the DNA into chunks, that’s #1 on the diagram above. For most of the past twenty years, this has meant chunking DNA down into pieces 25-50 letters long–just enough to probably get something unique over most of the genome, though you will have some areas that look identical at that tiny scale. In recent times, we’ve been getting better and better at what’s called “long read sequencing”, which at this point means fragments of several thousand DNA letters in length–though that’s still pretty short, compared to human chromosomes though: the average length of a human chromosome is 134 million letters long.

Depending on the sequencing technology and its needs, the sample may also need “amplification”: getting copied over and over using a protein originally harvested from hotspring-loving bacteria (#2). I always love that bit just as a concept: it’s one of many places where the modern study of genetics uses the microscopic, biological machinery of proteins for our own use!

After everything’s prepared, Then the sequencing itself can occur. That too is wild–the most common versions these days use tiny little fluorescent proteins to tag each letter of the DNA and read the sequence of lights (#3!). Some use infinitesimally tiny electrical modulations as DNA passes by a microscopic reader. There’s loads of different ways, anything works, so long as it can be read by a computer.

All this takes place in machines that are either small enough to fit on a countertop, or big enough to look like a fridge, and come in Apple White or Cheap Plastic Appliance.

Because you have a new species, you’re building what we call a reference genome. This tries to capture as much of the entire genome sequence as possible. Here’s an interesting wrinkle, though–A lot of samples won’t be just DNA from your target species! You might be picking up microbial DNA along the way as well. That can be really interesting and worth knowing about, though! Some people spend their whole careers studying the genomes of microbes found on people’s skin, or in their bodies. You’ll be computationally sorting out which sequences are in contiguous, mammalian chromosomes, which are from mitochondrial DNA (those cute little powerhouses have their own genomes!), and which come from microbes.

At the end of it, you have sequenced an entire genome. Because you want to find out how related it is to humans, you compare it to our reference genome–The human reference genomes we use is an assembly made from multiple individuals.* We use the reference genome as a common point of comparison that we refer to when studying genetic variation.

*Though if you’re working with data form the Genome Reference Consortium as is usually standard, one anonymous African-European donor, RP11, is still the backbone of the reference, accounting for 70% of the latest assembly.

(https://mk.bcgsc.ca/telomere-to-telomere-human-genome-assembly/posters.mhtml)

So, we’d compare this new mammalian genome to our own–how much overlap would we find? A lot. How you define our similarities and differences from other species can change the answer, but you’ll expect a lot of overlap. Some areas of the genome diverge faster than others, others are highly conserved–generally the more stable it is, the more important it is for our function.

Through many, many, many studies and corroboration with the archaeological record, we’ve worked out how to estimate how long ago two species diverged from each other. Actually, you’d rarely be comparing between just two species at this stage–get out all the other relevant reference genomes you’ve got! Compare them all! Build a phylogenetic tree–the modern version of that “tree of life” idea that Darwin popularized. Then you’ll have a more accurate sense of how your mystery species relates to everything.

(https://www.embl.org/news/science/a-new-tree-of-life-allows-a-closer-look-at-the-origin-of-species/)

I’m going to go off on a tangent to end this post, because that’s just the start, taking the entire genome of a single individual. This is what most people think is what we always do. But no! That’s expensive overkill for most experiments. Once you’re familiar with a species, and you’ve sequenced DNA from many individuals, you can identify areas where lots of them have sequence variants. These can be completely benign, differences that make us all unique, or make an individual more susceptible to disease. This allows us to target what we want out of DNA sequencing: Are we trying to diagnose an illness? Identify a person from a tissue sample? Or are we doing something more exploratory?

Depending on what you want, you select anywhere from a handful of locations, up to tens of thousands. The closest many people have gotten to this stuff is through ancestry services like 23andMe, which uses this kind of sequencing.

But that’s not all! There’s so many different targets to choose from, depending on what you want to do! So many techniques to get DNA in different ways! And we still haven’t gotten to the part that I actually work on.

I’m a computational geneticist. I get all the gigabytes of data that comes out of these experiments and I get to dig into the details, the patterns that emerge between genetic code and the details of the organisms we study, the connections between genome sequence and other, wilder things we can collect data on, the dizzying complexities of what goes on every microsecond of every day in every cell in your body.

I love my job.

⛬

(Previous) | (Index) | ⛬

⛬

Citations for alt-text rambles:

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_YuTMDkWfI 2. https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.116129 note: this source lists the image as credit to “J.M.B.”, which is not how I’m used to seeing images credited. Those are the initials of one of the authors, but I thought it meant “Journal of Molecular Biology”, so I went on a half hour wander around the internet trying to find where the hell this fish blood came from. 3. https://www.thebhs.org/publications/the-herpetological-journal/volume-13-number-4-october-2003/1729-01-hyperbiliverdinemia-in-the-shingleback-lizard-tiliqua-rugosa 4. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1439-0264.2009.00952.x 5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandrill#Characteristics 6. https://www.vogue.com/article/dune-part-two-costumes-jacqueline-west-interview 7. http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.29564.08327 8. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357946568_New_approaches_and_concepts_to_study_complex_microbial_communities 9. https://karobben.github.io/2023/10/30/Bioinfor/PacBio/

Overflow Ramble 1

the fuckin “DNA MATCH” machine. I already wrote a 380-word alt-text about this thing last time. I’m not doing it again. I’m going to talk about things I like instead. Such as Dune: Part Two! Yes! I mentioned it last week and then didn’t ramble about it after seeing it. Well, NOW I WILL. tl;dr it’s good, go see it. I only vaguely remember the book, but I liked the changes they made to center the fact that no, Paul becoming Lisan al-Gaib is not actually a good thing.

Man, it’s nice to see a movie where the costumers and set designers got good time to work on their craft. (cite 6) Even the generic Harkonnen soldiers looked great–reminded me a lot of my beloved Warframe, probably because the costume designer was using H.R. Giger for inspiration there. Everything felt real. Even the stuff that definitely wasn’t–the gigantic spice harvesters and ships felt like living, physically present beings. The sand worms looked great. The movie did a fantastic job visually communicating the massive size of so many things. Especially because the camera remains restrained: no weightless zipping around, the camera itself follows paths and finds locations that make sense.

Chakobsa continues to be a fantastic conlang, now the work of both David and Jesse Peterson. It’s heard a lot more in this movie, and there are some great flourishes with it. While there isn’t as much Arabic vocabulary in it as in the original books, I remember from DJP’s work streams that he definitely was using the grammar of Arabic as one of his touchstones. Most key words remain Arabic though–jihad was removed, but it made me double-take in the theater when Stilgar referred to Paul as the Mahdi.

I’m of two minds about lowering the Arab influences on the Fremen–on the one hand, missing representation, which included some explicit ties to real world anti-imperial struggles in North Africa and the Middle East. On the other, these first two movies are about how the Fremen are manipulated by a colonial power, using their adherence to a faith that was manipulated by a different colonial power. They become both hapless victims and also perpetrators of colonial violence, with only Chani seeing through it.

I think the general decisionmaking process on cultural changes was motivated by a desire to remove some of Frank Herbert’s bad ideas–particularly around the Harkonnens, thank fuck. That seems to have been the thinking around altering the Fremen a bit as well. Did it succeed? Not my place to say. On all other notes, I have no reservations recommending the movie. It’s a very earnest attempt to bring that world to life, and I think it succeeds.

Overflow Ramble 2

A figure showing the basic steps of the standard Illumina sequencing method (cite 7). It is broken into four sub-figures:

Library Preparation. The genome is snipped into small fragments, then adapters are attached (“ligated”) to stabilize the molecule and make it behave. This creates a “library” of DNA that will be read from.

DNA library bridge amplification. The adapters on DNA fragments stick to a prepared plate, which is covered in little clusters of molecules that specially attach to those adapters. Biochemical processes are then carried out in repeated cycles to duplicate (or “amplify”) those fragments in such a way that the clusters on the plate are all filled with copies of just one DNA fragment.

DNA library sequencing. The DNA is modified so that the four letters it’s made out of all glow a specific color, with each DNA letter shining in sequence. This is pure awesome and I love it.

Alignment and data analysis. Because of some details on how step 1 is done, you have lots of fragments that create an overlapping patchwork of sequences. This allows (most of) the genome to be pasted back together by looking for overlaps (“contiguous sequences”, or “contigs” for short).

Congratulations! You have just attended an abridged graduate-level introductory lecture on Illumina sequencing.

Overflow Ramble 3

A diagram of PacBio Systems’ sequencing technology, Single Molecule, Real-Time Sequencing, or SMRT Sequencing, because scientists love acronyms. Pretty much every step is different from how Illumina does it. I cannot find a diagram that’s both brief and also good at explaining what it’s showing, so this is the best I could find. It’s split into four parts with attendant text, which I’ll try and explain as well.

“SMRTbell template. Two hairpin adapters allow continuous circular sequencing.”

Library preparation basically involves taking a longer chunk of DNA and splitting it in half lengthwise, in such a way that the two strands of DNA will form a single-stranded loop. This is called a SMRTbell library. Why? I have no idea!

“ZMW wells. Sites where sequencing takes place.”

Then, these are fed into SMRT Cells, which contain zero-mode waveguides (ZMWs). I was once told what this means, and I have completely forgotten, but it sounds like something from Gundam.

“Modified polymerase. As a nucleotide is incorporated by the polymerase, a camera records the emitted light.”

What I do understand is that at the bottom of each of these little holes, they stick a molecule which the DNA sticks to. This molecule, a polymerase, has precisely one job: make more DNA, an exact copy of what it’s latched onto. So you give it this loop of DNA, feed it a soup of free DNA letters, and it starts cranking out a new strand.

“PacBio output. A camera records the changing colours from all ZMWs; each colour change corresponds to one base.”

Each one of the DNA letters given to the polymerase has a special modifier, on it which flashes a color when the polymerase slots it into the new strand it’s making. A camera picks up this flash. And, because the DNA is a circle, the polymerase doesn’t know where to stop–it just keeps going and going until something breaks or it runs out of letters to work with. This means that even if the camera misses a flash the first time, it will have more chances to see it, and confirm what it already saw.

Wait what in the fuck this figure was from somebody’s thesis (cite 8), but that wasn’t what actually got this into search results. What got it there was a github page with a vtuber avatar sitting in the corner?? What??? (cite 9)

⛬

(Previous) | (Index) | (Next)

⛬

#Prometheus 2012 #Prometheus (2012)#I go rogue and refuse to talk about the movie #or rather I spend 4600 words talking about a quarter of a scene as a springboard to talk about my job and how cool it is #I kind of envy people who work on wild population genetics #but also their sample sizes are tiny and bad for my particular specialty #so I'm giving a broad overview on how reference genome assembly works and I've only ever done phylogenetics on intraspecific variants #yes this is how much I talk about bits of my job that aren't even directly my job #because working in genetics is SO COOL #tomorrow we'll be back to analyzing inexplicable characters and androids poisoning people don't worry

41 notes · View notes