10-16-2016, 08:11 PM
Tweak is a bit of a loose term. It basically means an organism that retains much of its original genome, but which has been genetically 'tweaked' to achieve certain pre-defined goals; higher intelligence, faster locomotion, greater height or strength. It is also used to describe organisms which are altered to tolerate different environments - different atmospheric compositions, different temperatures or gravity regimes, different sources of nutrition or radiation levels.
This covers a very large range of possibilities, from mildly tweaked people who are not prone to space-sickness, to people who can live on worlds that would instantly kill a non-tweak. If a person is tweaked extensively, that is to say their genetics are significantly altered and replaced with entirely new material, they could be regarded as neogens - organisms with entirely artificial genomes. Some clades I've written about are described as neogen-tweaks; they retain a lot of their ancestral genome, but incorporate a lot of new stuff too. it's a sliding scale.
Tweaks are somewhat different to splices, which are organisms which contain genetic material from two or more sources; but I would expect most splices to be heavily tweaked as well, and probably would contain a significant amount of neogen material too. (Rianths are really a subset of splices, but I'm happy to keep them separate for historical reasons).
According to canon most organisms in the Terragen Sphere are genetically modified in some way, but the dividing lines between splice, tweak, neogen and provolve are going to be fairly arbitrary. But does that mean these categories are redundant? I don't think so; the sophonts themselves would probably have their own opinions on thie genetic status, and many would choose to self identify as tweak, neogen or splice, even if the truth were more complex.
This covers a very large range of possibilities, from mildly tweaked people who are not prone to space-sickness, to people who can live on worlds that would instantly kill a non-tweak. If a person is tweaked extensively, that is to say their genetics are significantly altered and replaced with entirely new material, they could be regarded as neogens - organisms with entirely artificial genomes. Some clades I've written about are described as neogen-tweaks; they retain a lot of their ancestral genome, but incorporate a lot of new stuff too. it's a sliding scale.
Tweaks are somewhat different to splices, which are organisms which contain genetic material from two or more sources; but I would expect most splices to be heavily tweaked as well, and probably would contain a significant amount of neogen material too. (Rianths are really a subset of splices, but I'm happy to keep them separate for historical reasons).
According to canon most organisms in the Terragen Sphere are genetically modified in some way, but the dividing lines between splice, tweak, neogen and provolve are going to be fairly arbitrary. But does that mean these categories are redundant? I don't think so; the sophonts themselves would probably have their own opinions on thie genetic status, and many would choose to self identify as tweak, neogen or splice, even if the truth were more complex.