Yancy Fry is the Mighty One

[on:]

Although Fry is considered "The Mighty One" by the Niblonians, there is one other whom is his own Grandfather. Yancy Fry(Fry's Father, not his brother) is Fry's Father. However, Yancy Fry is also Fry's Son. So here is an example

Yancy Fry, Father of Phillip Fry,Father of Yancy Fry. This makes Yancy his own grandfather.

[Reply #1 on:]

Nice find.

[Reply #2 on:]

It's not the "being your own grandfather" bit that makes someone the Mighty One, although it helps: it's the lack of a delta brainwave.  Fry clearly doesn't have one, as seen in both Brain Spawn episodes, and he's supposed to be the only person in the known universe (likely in the known time line of the universe) who is missing this wave; his father/son is probably just a carrier for the gene(s).

That is a nice catch, though; I've never realized that before.

[Reply #3 on:]

He told me earlier today.

[Reply #4 on:]

   It's not the "being your own grandfather" bit that makes someone the Mighty One, although it helps: it's the lack of a delta brainwave.  Fry clearly doesn't have one, as seen in both Brain Spawn episodes, and he's supposed to be the only person in the known universe (likely in the known time line of the universe) who is missing this wave; his father/son is probably just a carrier for the gene(s).

   That is a nice catch, though; I've never realized that before.

If Philip Fry doesn't have a delta brain-wave while Yancy Fry does, then where did Yancy get his from? Where did their father get his delta brain-wave from?

Eh?

[Reply #5 on:]

Good point.  The Nibbloians said that Fry was the only one in the world who lacks the delta brain wave.  So how is it possible that Yancy Sr, and Yancy Jr don't have one? 

[Reply #6 on:]

If Philip Fry doesn't have a delta brain-wave while Yancy Fry does, then where did Yancy get his from? Where did their father get his delta brain-wave from?

I'm pretty sure their father got it from Mildred (and Fry's brother could have gotten his from either parent). 

Kurt, I don't understand what you're asking: Fry's brother and father DO have delta brainwaves; nothing has ever suggested otherwise.

I wrote this at The Leela Zone a few months back when I was trying to figure out, from a genetic perspective, how Fry is the only person in the universe without a delta brainwave.  It's more or less a series of rambles, so feel free to nitpick:

I'm still trying to figure out how it might work on a genetic level.  If [the lack of a delta brainwave]'s a dominant mutation, then that allows the gene to have come from a single mutation that was able to pass straight back to Fry.  But that also means that a good number of his descendants would also lack a delta brain wave, which seems really unlikely.  I mean, if the Nibblonians had a chance to get their hands on someone smarter than Fry, I think they would have taken it in a heartbeat.

If it's a recessive mutation that cropped up due to the inbreeding, that would explain why it's so apparently rare, and also how Fry could have ended up delta wave-less while nobody else in his family seemed to (it's not because they don't carry the right gene allele, it's because they need two of them).  But that theory requires a second recessive gene to have come from his mother's side; that isn't impossible, but it doesn't sit well with me because that suggests the mutation is (slightly) more common than the Nibblonians were insinuating in TDtESS.  I mean, the way they were talking, Fry was the first/only being with a brain like that up to that point in time.

Or maybe it's the result of a collection of "normal" genes + mutated genes that just happened to come together in the right way to create a functioning brain that didn't need a delta brainwave; I think this is most likely because it allows the rest of his family to be carriers while still keeping the odds of Fry's mutation occurring again low.

[Reply #7 on:]

It's been discovered that there are genes in the human genome that are recessive, carry no benefit for the organism and, indeed, are often apparently "dormant", unexpressed, yet which have also apparently survived in there for hundreds of thousands of years. Possibly millions. Nobody is quite sure why these genes are able to remain in place without being filtered out and without having any apparent use.

So with that in mind it's possible this "lacking delta brainwave" gene - lets call it LDB - is present in a large portion of the population. This means that it may need some other genes to be expressed different before it starts to be expressed as well. It's possibly a recessive red hair gene, the LDB gene and being your own grandfather are the right combination to cause this unexpressed recessive gene to begin expressing.

[Reply #8 on:]

Can you analyze a genetic sample to determine whether (or not) the sample's donor is their own grandfather?

[Reply #9 on:]

   It's not the "being your own grandfather" bit that makes someone the Mighty One, although it helps: it's the lack of a delta brainwave.  Fry clearly doesn't have one, as seen in both Brain Spawn episodes, and he's supposed to be the only person in the known universe (likely in the known time line of the universe) who is missing this wave; his father/son is probably just a carrier for the gene(s).

   That is a nice catch, though; I've never realized that before.

If Philip Fry doesn't have a delta brain-wave while Yancy Fry does, then where did Yancy get his from? Where did their father get his delta brain-wave from?

Eh?

Their father's are each other!

It's been discovered that there are genes in the human genome that are recessive, carry no benefit for the organism and, indeed, are often apparently "dormant", unexpressed, yet which have also apparently survived in there for hundreds of thousands of years. Possibly millions. Nobody is quite sure why these genes are able to remain in place without being filtered out and without having any apparent use.

So with that in mind it's possible this "lacking delta brainwave" gene - lets call it LDB - is present in a large portion of the population. This means that it may need some other genes to be expressed different before it starts to be expressed as well. It's possibly a recessive red hair gene, the LDB gene and being your own grandfather are the right combination to cause this unexpressed recessive gene to begin expressing.

Good point, but if this is true then Yancy would lack the delta wave aswell.

[Reply #10 on:]

...Wait.  Which Yancy are we talking about now? 

Arch's theory explains exactly why only Fry is missing a delta brainwave: even if he's not the only one carrying the LDB gene(s), he still the only individual who has those genes turned on.  For whatever reason, Fry is the only person in existance with the magical DNA sequence that allows the LDB trait to be expressed.

To expand on Archonix's example of

Code: [Select]

Dormant LDB + Expressed red hair + mutations from being own grandfather = Expressed LDBFry's father/son still couldn't have an active LDB gene because he doesn't have red hair.  The genetic sequence that designates these things isn't correct, so the gene isn't expressed and he ends up with a delta brainwave anyway.

[Reply #11 on:]

   To expand on Archonix's example of

      Dormant LDB + Expressed red hair + mutations from being own grandfather = Expressed LDB

   Fry's father/son still couldn't have an active LDB gene because he doesn't have red hair.  The genetic sequence that designates these things isn't correct, so the gene isn't expressed and he ends up with a delta brainwave anyway.

Which mutations? What would cause them? What property of genetic material is 'on' only when you are your own grandfather and is never 'on' for any other reason?

If the genetic makeup of Fry's maternal grandparents is A and B and if Mildred's (Fry's paternal grandmother) is C then...
Fry's mother's genetic makeup is A/2 + B/2,
Fry's father's genetic makeup is A/6 + B/6 + 2C/3,
& Fry's is A/3 + B/3 +C/3

So, unless the genes at Fry's conception somehow 'know' that C's partner was A/3 + B/3 +C/3 instead of (say) D, its hard to see what mutations might arise which aren't possible in other descendants of A's, B's, and C's common ancestors or aren't just random.

[Reply #12 on:]

Hmm.  "Mutations" was the wrong word to use and I should have picked up on that; sorry. 

Two people who are closely related don't share 100% of their DNA, but they do share a fair chunk of it.  The main reason incestuous relationships are frowned upon is because the potential that any offspring resulting from them will be born with life threatening or otherwise detrimental traits is increased, and this is because you've upped the chance of parent A sharing the same undesired recessive alleles as parent B due to the similar DNA.

What I meant to say was that it's possible Fry's son, and consequently Fry himself, has a strip (or several) of DNA code that turned out looking like it did because Fry and Mildred are so closely related.  If Mildred had another child by another man, it wouldn't be impossible for that same code to appear, but it would be more improbable because it would be less likely that this father had the same alleles to pass on.

But the bottom line is you're right about the mutations.  :P

ETA: ...Although now that I give this more thought, Fry wouldn't necessarily inherit that same patch of code because his mother would be supplying half the alleles for it. 

[Reply #13 on:]

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ETA: ...Although now that I give this more thought, Fry wouldn't necessarily inherit that same patch of code because his mother would be supplying half the alleles for it. 

Don't forget gamete shuffling, or whatever it's called. The process where dna sequences are shuffled back and forth on the genome to create a small amount of random variation. Sort of purposeful mutation. All that needs to happen is for a particular, normally dormant sequence to be shuffled into a position where it can have a neffect, with the assumption that it would normally remain dormant even if it were a dominant gene, except in the presence of the some other genetic sequences. It may be a sequence that often gets this shuffling applied to it, so in Fry's gametes it would be shuffled out of the way, or another sequence shuffled out of the way, rendering it dormant. Then, in Yancy Srs gametes it would be shuffled into the right spot and then combined with the presence of the red-haired gene (or whatever) it would express and alter the way Fry's brain was formed.

[Reply #14 on:]

Which is just down to (potentially) very small chances of 'something' happening but that doesn't really explain why it has never happened before (or, in the thousand years since, presumably).

Cousins have, what, about a quarter of their genetic material in common, right? Fry has a third of his genetic material in common with each of the other three grandparents and (if my proportions from my previous post were right) Fry's father has a third of his genetic material in common with Fry's mom. So in that sense Fry's parents are more closely related than cousins are, therefore inbreeding-like defects are certainly on the cards but such defects are also possible in unrelated parings, so its just a matter of odds again.

[Reply #15 on:]

Well, the chances of this happening are presumably so low that Fry is the only one to get that particular genetic combination within the time period necessary. It's possible some future people would get it too, but they'd be too late, and if people had it previously they were around too early to be frozen and sent to the future.

The most likely solution is that Fry has ended up carrying a unique gene or sequence of genes that nobody else has, and which would remain dormant when passed onto his father and be activated when passed onto Fry. Since Fry is apparently the result of a closed loop there's nobody prior to that point who would inherit the gene and the specific of combinatory genes necessary to activate that particular sequence because they don't exist until Fry introduces them. It could well be that Yancy snr only passed that sequence on to Philip, since it might be attached to the obviously recessive red hair gene that Yancy snr would have ended up carrying. Yancy jr seems to have inherited the dominant brown, and so presumably the sequence for the lack of delta brainwave is attached to that recessive red in some way. There are genes that remain grouped like this for tends of thousands of years without any reason why they should remain attached together.

So there you go. The recessive red and its attached gene doesn't get passed onto Yancy, since he only gets the dominant brown, with his recessive red coming from his mother to be passed on to Philip Fry jr. Fry gets two sets of recessive reds, the one from his father attached to the sequence that makes his brain work differently, before being zapped a thousand years into the future, removing the gene from the human gene pool until some point when Fry presumably breeds.

Of course you have to assume that Yancy snr didn't have any more children after this point. It's a likely supposition given the lack of other "might ones".

Given that Fry's birth is the result of a closed time loop paradox, the gene sequence in question doesn't have to come from anywhere. All it has to do is reliably pass through Yancy to Fry without passing on to anyone else.

[Reply #16 on:]

It simply skips a generation, as many genetic traits do.

It also only works 50% of the time, so Yancy Jr. didn't get it, nor will any of his progeny.

Fry's second grandkid is in TROUBLE! 

[Reply #17 on:]

The way I figure it, Eenus was Fry's maternal grandfather, since his father Yancy has brown hair, and Fry's mother has orange hair which is probably a trait on the maternal side. Also in the episode Luck of the Fryish , Fry's father claims that his own father was named Yancy. The only reason we would have to believe that Eenus is Fry's paternal grandfather is that he is a military man. Also in answer to some of the gene problems created by this scenario, If Fry is his own Maternal grandfather, then his mother would still have uncorrupted MTDNA that she received from her mother (since it is only passed by females) she would then pass this on to Fry and his brother Yancy. If the lack of a delta brain wave was somehow attached to a recessive gene then Fry's grandchildren (i.e. Yancy and himself) would have a fifty/fifty chance of inheriting it and having it manifest itself. This makes sense because again, fry has his mother's hair color, and Yancy has their father's.
But would that mean that there would also have to be the same mutation on one of the alleles that he inhereted from his father to create such a disorder? Now I am confused, maybe someone with better genetic know how can pick up from here.

[Reply #18 on:]

Actually, Fry's father never says his father was named Yancy. He says he named his son Yancy, just like he's named Yancy, and his grandfather is named Yancy.

I'd say the red hair is more coincidental than anything. Saying Enus was actually a grandfather of Fry's at some point, I'd still say he was the paternal one.

[Reply #19 on:]

That's right he did say that his grandfather was named yancy.

[Reply #20 on:]

My studies lead me to agree with Archonix.

[Reply #21 on:]

Although Fry is considered "The Mighty One" by the Niblonians, there is one other whom is his own Grandfather. Yancy Fry(Fry's Father, not his brother) is Fry's Father. However, Yancy Fry is also Fry's Son. So here is an example

Yancy Fry, Father of Phillip Fry,Father of Yancy Fry. This makes Yancy his own grandfather.

That's not really the same thing. Yancy didn't go back in time to have sexy time with his grandma.

[Reply #22 on:]

I wonder what yancy's middle name was. Doug's middle name was yancy i wonder if it was Doug

[Reply #23 on:]

Good point.  The Nibbloians said that Fry was the only one in the world who lacks the delta brain wave.  So how is it possible that Yancy Sr, and Yancy Jr don't have one? 

Remember the present and past tense, He was the only one in the world to lack it, not the only one ever! Although I'm probably wrong... Everybody seems to have proved me wrong...

[Reply #24 on:]

You're all focusing on genetics. It may not be a genetic factor that makes Fry unique, but rather a quantum distortion centered on him due to the fact that he is the focal point of a rather thorny time paradox. While his progeny originated from that paradox, they weren't directly associated with it. Fry's existence is the result of him having gone back in time and essentially created himself - in that moment, there and then, the Universe got tied in a knot of temporal paradox which Fry was the axis of - all of existence could have ended, Fry could have vanished, or he could have been imbued with an unusual quantum signature that erased his 'delta' wave and enabled him to smell colors . Remember that Fry's unique connection to spacetime was what enabled the Brainspawn to send him back in time to the point where he fell into the cryo-tube - this suggests an esoteric relationship with the continuum. I don't think it's a gene at all.

(My fic, Blame it on the Brain touched on this.)

[Reply #25 on:]

It seems entirely plausible to me that fry as "the one" was not a natural phemonon at all, but the result of a combination of plan and prophecy on the part of the Nibblonians. Guiding humanity's evolution for millenia. This would explain not only fry, but the Stupid Ages themselves. The subsequent repeated conquering of earth in the 1000 years between the stupid ages and the year 3000 may have been part of a larger "corrective" project, reversing the damage done to the human genome towards the goal of creating someone stupid enough to resist the Nibblonians' ancient foe, the Brain Spawn.

[Reply #26 on:]

That's stupidawesome! You're being stupidawesome! StopKeep stupidawesomeing up the stupid thread with your stupidityAwesomeness! 

This post has been improved by Gopher.

[Reply #27 on:]

Thank you, coldangel, you flatter me too much....

Drunk with power? Me? Nooo, nevar...

[Reply #28 on:]

Now now, don't go putting words in my mouth.

[Reply #29 on:]

It seems entirely plausible to me that fry as "the one" was not a natural phemonon at all, but the result of a combination of plan and prophecy on the part of the Nibblonians. Guiding humanity's evolution for millenia. This would explain not only fry, but the Stupid Ages themselves. The subsequent repeated conquering of earth in the 1000 years between the stupid ages and the year 3000 may have been part of a larger "corrective" project, reversing the damage done to the human genome towards the goal of creating someone stupid enough to resist the Nibblonians' ancient foe, the Brain Spawn.

I think that's even implied by the speech that Nibbler gives Fry in The Why of Fry

Going back to the main focus of the thread, I think that the reason Fry lacks the Delta Brainwave whilst his father posesses it is simple inbreeding.

Fry lacks the Delta Brainwave. He knocks up Mildred. She has it. So her offspring has it, but they also possess a copy of the gene that doesn't have it. Her offspring contributes 50% of Fry's genetic makeup. So 25% of Fry's DNA comes from Fry.

25% comes from Mildred, and 50% comes from the other parent's side of the family. If we assume that the gene which lacks the Delta Brainwave is carried on the Y chromasome and remains inactive on the X chromasome... (also assuming that Fry's father is Mildred's son) then Fry inherited the one copy of the gene which lacks the Delta Brainwave from his father's Y-type sperm. The second copy on that chromasome was either defective or mutated, and so did not activate.

It's a reasonable set of assumptions. Given the cosmic co-incidence that sent Fry back to 1947 was equally as unlikely.

Archonix's theory that the gene is attached to the gene causing red hair would also make sense. Since the other copy on Fry's Y chromasome is attached to the brown hair gene, it would remain inactive.

It seems that interesting threads have returned to On-Topic. 

[Reply #30 on:]

Farnsworth has red hair.

[Reply #31 on:]

Subsequent generations would likely have eliminated the rogue gene from the DNA strand by the time that Farnsworth was born.

Time for another crappy TNUK MSpaint diagram...

[Reply #32 on:]

I prefer my explanation. It requires less reading and more vague hand-gestures.