Lifereborn - The Life Weavers Retreat

Lacking chlorophyll Dodder (genus Cuscuta) has evolved a parasitic relationship with it’s host plants for water and nutrients. It invades its hosts using specialized structures called haustoria, which penetrate the host plant's vascular system to extract resources - sounds like a 1950s horror thriller. Not welcome on farms as it reduces crop yields.

Did you know! Elephant Seals are negatively buoyant, which means that they sink naturally in the water, but have to use energy to swim back up. This means that they are able to save 18-24% of their energy on a dive compared to having to actively swim down. This descent is so effective that they can actually fall asleep on the way down! They are also officially described as "falling like a leaf". Have a look at the cool diagram below that I pulled from one of my university lectures that I went to a few years ago.

ID: a diagram of the descent pattern of an elephant seal. There are three axes (depth, distance west and distance south) showing the distances from the release point in metres. There is a coloured scale showing the speed of the descent, and a spiral made up of coloured dots that show the route.

Comatricha nigra by barrywebbimages

Lamproderma scintillans by Andy Sands

Luthadel by Ricky Ho

the lichen knowledge iceberg i have constructed on request

Questioner: My question is about biology and genetics. We've seen that magical systems rely on *inaudible* genetics, like allomancy, or spiritual DNA. Can we use *inaudible* CRISPR to either weaponize or take someone's magical ability or give them a magical ability?

Brandon Sanderson: Kind of. The in-world version of this is Hemalurgy, as you already know. There are methods that would do this, but straight genetics alone with CRISPR wouldn't do it.

You need the spiritual component for these to work, almost assuredly. You might be able to use CRISPR... no, I don't think there are any of them it would work on. Is it possible you could make someone into a kandra?

That may be possible, right? But I'm not 100% sure on that.

Questioner: Can you use CRISPR with Ashyn viruses or bacteria?

Brandon Sanderson: Probably not, but that's more likely. I'd have to think on that. I'm gonna say "probably not" for now, but we'll minorly RAFO that. Good questions.