Daming 1805

Emperor year [-] in the Gregorian calendar.

Three "space platforms", which are electromagnetic acceleration launch tracks, have been built one after another.

Four formal nuclear fusion power stations have also been put into operation, and the people of Ming Dynasty now have almost unlimited primary energy.

The Ming Dynasty Air Force began to continuously transport supplies into space, and the nuclear fusion power station on the moon was under intense construction.

Other lunar industrial facilities and lunar deep space exploration bases have completed comprehensive planning and will be launched in an orderly manner.

The one percent light speed spacecraft experiment has also been completed.

Other satellites and asteroids in the inner solar system with available space resources have already entered the scope of future exploration.

The Ming Dynasty is about to officially enter the space age.

But all these seemingly grand things are not the most important things in [-].

The most important things are still top secret for the time being.

The craftsmen of Yingzhou Laboratory, with the assistance of complex intelligent machines, have achieved a number of new results that will completely change the destiny of mankind.

They completed complete gene editing of two fertilized chimpanzee eggs.

After being implanted into two female chimpanzees, they successfully developed into baby chimpanzees and were born normally.

Now it is growing healthily according to the predetermined characteristics.

Craftsmen did not knock out or modify a certain gene, nor did they increase or decrease a certain trait.

Instead, it completely reshaped the genetic map of this organism as a whole.

While retaining complete functions, various problems accumulated during the evolutionary process have been cleared up at once.

This technology can also solve various defects in humans when used on humans.

Humans are the most complex animals in the world.

From the original single-celled organisms, it took billions of years to evolve step by step into what it is now.

A more accurate term for "evolution" is "evolution". The essence of evolution is that beneficial mutations are beneficial to survival and reproduction, so they can be retained and passed on.

Mutation is unplanned and has no purpose.

Common, sudden changes in certain physiological traits that occur at any time, various types, and have no target.

After this sudden change occurs, then accept the test of nature’s laws of survival.

If a certain mutation can increase the owner's ability to survive, then the owner can have an advantage in the competition for survival.

In turn, more descendants can be left behind.

If offspring can maintain the same characteristics, they can continue to have an advantage in the competition for survival and continue to leave more offspring.

Over time, groups with this mutant characteristic will become the mainstream among similar organisms.

Individuals without this mutant trait will gradually disappear.

If a certain mutant trait has a negative effect, it will reduce the owner's ability to survive.

Naturally, such individuals leave very few offspring.

If the offspring still have the same mutation characteristics, they will be at a greater disadvantage in the competition for survival and it will be more difficult to leave offspring.

Organisms with such mutated characteristics have difficulty surviving, cannot be passed on to future generations, and will eventually disappear.

Since there is no plan for the mutation itself, the test criterion is only whether it is beneficial to survival and reproduction, and there is no special examination for other issues at all.

During this mutation process, various problems will definitely arise and remain, seemingly unimportant problems.

A typical problem closely related to human life is the eyes of humans and vertebrates.

If most invertebrate eyes are plastic bags, then vertebrate eyes are plastic bags turned inside out.

The eye structure of most invertebrates has photoreceptor cells in front of the visual conduction nerves.

After light enters the eye, it first shines directly on the photoreceptor cells.

The photoreceptor cells process visual signals and transmit them directly to the optic nerve at the back of the body, which then transmits the signal to the brain further back.

The flow from front to back is very smooth, and the wiring is well designed behind the panel.

It is equivalent to the screen driver board behind the LCD panel, the signal line behind the driver board, and the signals are transmitted to the motherboard in sequence from front to back.

The eyes of humans and all vertebrates are exactly the opposite.

Photoreceptor cells are located behind the optic nerve.

After light enters the eye, it must first pass through the optic nerve layer before it can illuminate the photoreceptor cells.

There is no benefit to such a process.

It also requires the optic nerve layer to be as thin as possible, as transparent as possible, and not to block light, otherwise it will affect vision.

The photoreceptor cells process the visual signal and then transmit it to the visual nerve blocking the front of you.

Nor does the optic nerve do any good in being in front of the photoreceptor cells.

Nerves also need to punch holes in the photoreceptor cell layer to transmit visual signals to the brain behind the eyes.

This hole is still a hole no matter how small it is, so it will leave a blind spot.

It is equivalent to the LCD screen driver board on the front of the screen. In order not to block the display content of the screen, it can only be designed to be as transparent as possible.

You also need to dig a hole in the middle of the screen to allow the signal lines from the driver board to pass through the screen and connect to the motherboard behind the screen.

From the perspective of humankind's own industrial design logic, this is a design that is mentally ill.

The fundamental reason for this situation is that the earliest vertebrates had eyes on the back of their heads.

The head of vertebrates has undergone many mutations. The original back of the head became the later front face, and the entire head flipped back and forth once.

The eyes did not follow the scalp in a circle, but suddenly turned back and forth in place, like taking off socks.

After this sudden change, the eye direction was correct. Although there were many problems, it was still usable, so I continued to use it with some tinkering.

It’s not over yet. There have been “regrets” in evolutionary history.

Certain functions of some animals' bodies seem to be of little use to them at a certain time.

Therefore, this function disappears, and at the same time, other mutations that enhance useful abilities may become beneficial mutations and be retained.

But in the next era, it turned out that this function was useful again.

Therefore, among the surviving ethnic groups, groups with similar enhanced functions appeared, and they became the new mainstream in the era.

However, the useful function that emerges from subsequent mutations and the function that disappears from the previous mutation are usually two completely different forms and structures.

Since it is a mutation, it is not planned, it just happens to be similar to the original function.

Any similarity is purely coincidental.

The most typical representatives are the eyes of humans and primates...

When mammals first appeared, they were basically in the form of mice, and they all had the habit of lying in bed during the day and emerging at night.

So the ability to perceive red and green makes little sense.

But the ability to sense light intensity is very useful, allowing them to see clearly in the dark.

Certain individual mutations in early mammals weakened cells that sense red and green colors and strengthened cells that sense light intensity.

The picture of the world becomes black and white, but the contrast between different lights is particularly strong.

This mutation was beneficial at the time, as individuals with this mutation were able to find more food and thus leave more offspring.

Later, mammals increased in size and began to compete for ecological niches during the day.

Especially when monkeys start to climb trees to eat fruits, they need to tell whether the fruits are ripe by their color.

An unexpected mutation in some individuals in the monkey group resulted in a weakened ability to perceive light, but they were able to distinguish between red and green colors.

This is also a beneficial mutation in this era.

They are able to find more ripe fruit and therefore survive and leave more offspring.

Today's humans are all descendants of these monkeys.

This mutation, like the one that flips the eyes, destabilizes the gene that controls the production of red photoreceptor cells.

During human development, once there is a problem with this gene, the person may lose the ability to perceive red and become medically red-green blind.Humans and primates may have the highest probability of eye lesions among all animals...

Because their eyes are so well done.

Mutations like this appear all the time, but most of them are meaningless and disappear if people don't feel them.

Just like some people will mutate to develop four-color vision similar to birds.

However, this mutation cannot directly increase the probability of survival or the chance of reproducing offspring, so it cannot be specialized and fixed.

The "evolution" result we can see is actually an overall survivor bias.

It is the survivors and the winners who survive and have a voice.

The losers are simply gone.

Therefore, observing the evolution of animals living in the world gives the impression that they have worked hard towards a successful outcome.

In fact, they all make random changes first, and then screen out useful results.

To use a computer program analogy, all such mutations in organisms are just a lot of random writing at the beginning, and finally find one that can run normally and be retained.

No one cares about why this executable statement can run.

The eyes of vertebrates, with their silly design that flips inside and out, have continued to function for hundreds of millions of years.

All subsequent corrections are made based on this silly design.

There have also been situations where this function was originally useless, so I deleted it, but later found it was still useful, so I wrote another copy.

The deletion process and the writing process are both at a level that can be run.

The human eye can also see red and green. If the color is not accurate enough or there is an occasional glitch, it will not affect the overall operation.

At the same time, there are a lot of parameters and definitions that I don’t know whether they are useful or not, and may change at any time.

Therefore, there will also be cases of atavism or loss.

These mutations accumulate from generation to generation, and they become countless things that just work, forcibly piled up into huge mountains.

If we compare it with computer programs, the genes of complex animals are all full of shit code.

Humanity is the largest of them all.

Human eyes are the tallest peak on this shit mountain.

So much so that the human brain continues to evolve and develop extraordinary image rendering and completion capabilities.

As a result, humans have become the animals most easily deceived by vision.

Mature gene editing technology can finally give humans the opportunity to solve these problems accumulated in genes.

That is to reconstruct this mountain of shit that has accumulated for billions of years.

If the reshaping is truly completed, it will be a sublimation of the nature of life for the human species.

Solving these remaining problems will naturally enhance human vitality and directly extend human health.

Human physical fitness will definitely be directly enhanced, and at the same time, life expectancy may be directly doubled or tripled.

Just like an unreasonably designed machine is rebuilt, it runs faster and smoother, and its operating time will be extended.

The inefficient Shishan garbage code was completely reshaped, and the running efficiency of the entire program directly increased many times.

This is the passive effect that simply correcting known problems should produce.

Now that overall gene editing can be done, it can also actively enhance certain characteristics and extend human life span.

The number of divisions of body cells in advanced animals is limited. After a certain number of divisions, they will gradually age, and eventually the entire body will age and die.

Ming's craftsmen can directly cancel the limit on the number of cell divisions through gene editing.

But they have also known through biological research for a long time that the more times an animal's body cells divide, the greater the probability of cancer.

Most cancer cells are cells that have exceeded the limit on the number of times they can divide, but they are fatal to animals.

Therefore, the somatic cells of advanced animals have a limited number of divisions, which is beneficial to animals.

The somatic cells of the earliest and simplest animals originally had no limit to the number of times they could divide.

The limit on the number of divisions is also the result of the preservation of certain beneficial mutations that occurred in the ancient geological history.

But at the same time, if all the cells of an organism have a limit to the number of divisions, then this animal population will obviously not be able to continue for a long time.

Animal populations need to reproduce if they are to persist.

Any form of animal reproduction behavior is the result of cell division at the microscopic level.

All the cells in all living creatures today were derived from the division of the earliest biological cells on Earth billions of years ago.

These cells have been dividing continuously for billions of years.

It is only through the accumulation of countless mutations that it takes on the appearance that people see now.

Therefore, these advanced animals now also have some special cells, which have no limit on the number of divisions.

But animals have additional means to control their chances of developing cancer.

Therefore, a more accurate statement about the limit on the number of animal cell divisions should be as follows:

"The cell division forms of advanced animals are restricted to appropriate ranges according to the needs of life continuation."

This kind of result with multiple restrictions cannot be directly achieved by a single mutation.

It can only be the accumulation of multiple mutations.

Now animals with these reasonable division restrictions have become the absolute mainstream in the entire world.

Unrestricted animals are found in the most inconspicuous and fringe places.

Based on this theory and reality, even if humans now have the ability to edit genes, they dare not directly completely cancel the restriction of cell division.

Technology can only be obtained through genetic analysis and restrictions can be relaxed within a certain range.

Keep the probability of canceration under control while extending cell life as much as possible while maintaining cell activity as much as possible.

This further increases the upper limit of the number of cell divisions and prolongs the interval between cell divisions.

Ensure that the growth process of division is normal, harmonious and controllable.

Instead of cancer cells absorbing the sound, uncontrollable and unlimited division and growth occur.

Animal experiments on related technologies have also been done.

After comprehensive adjustments, the life expectancy of animals can be extended by three to ten times.

Putting it on humans, there is a chance to extend human lifespan to hundreds or even thousands of years.

Coupled with overall gene editing and eliminating problems left over from the evolutionary process, it should be possible to basically guarantee a thousand-year lifespan upper limit.

Although it is far from reaching the standard of eternal life, it can be said to be a leap forward for human beings.

However, if you want to achieve the most ideal state, you can only directly edit the genes of fertilized eggs.

It can only be realized in future children.

Existing people who have been born can only extend their lifespan through external means, including various specialized drugs and cell surgeries.

Acquired and external conventional means should only be able to achieve the lower limit of pure gene editing.

It can reach two to three hundred years old.

If you really don't care about the cost, you can repair all the cells in your body through comprehensive cell surgery.

It may be possible to achieve effects similar to gene editing.

But there are obviously certain risks in doing so.

The first is whether this acquired repair itself can allow all modified cells to still be highly harmonious.

What's more important is the issue of how the fully repaired or modified cells and even the body fit in with the body's original consciousness.

Human beings have not yet fully understood the operating logic of the consciousness field, and repairing brain cells may lead to the loss of the consciousness field.

It is possible to directly become a vegetative state or completely brain dead.