Plus, our DNA changes as we grow older, doesn't it? So maybe wrinkles and such at his age are now written into his genetic code.
Why The Huge Gap Between TMP & WOK?
- Thread starter DeepSpaceYorks
- Start date
That's not how it works. The popular myth is that DNA determines absolutely everything about the body, and that's certainly an oversimplification that Star Trek has often embraced, but in reality there's a lot more involved. Any mutations that might occur in a person's DNA over their lifetimes probably wouldn't have that much effect, except maybe to cause cancer or other diseases/breakdowns if they're severe enough to affect coding. A mutation in the gametes might express in one's offspring, which is part of how evolutionary change happens. But despite the fantasy of episodes like "Genesis" or "Divergence," rewriting a person's DNA won't magically change their appearance. DNA is the blueprint for building the body, but once the body's already built, redrawing the blueprints won't change the structure. Especially since such mutations would just be in certain cells, not in all the trillions of cells of the body at once. It doesn't matter if a few cells are expressing a different set of instructions if they're still swamped by all the others expressing the regular instructions. (Unless, of course, those instructions cause that particular cluster of cells to reproduce out of control, in which case you get cancer.)
Maybe you're thinking of telomeres, the "endcaps" of DNA molecules, that tend to get shorter with age. When Dolly the cloned sheep died young, it was suspected that a clone's shorter telomeres would cause it to be "born old" and have a shortened lifespan. Maybe you're suggesting that something similar was the case here. But Dolly's own clones have aged normally, so that idea's been disproven.
And of course, the body is affected by a lot of things that have nothing to do with DNA, just as the appearance of a building can be changed by its environment in ways that have nothing to do with its blueprints. As I said, wrinkles and age spots are the result of decades of environmental damage to the skin, mostly exposure to ultraviolet light. At most, your genetics might affect how susceptible you are to that kind of damage -- for instance, my family's genetics make us somewhat resistant to wrinkles, so we tend to look young for our age. But it would still take decades of exposure to the sun and the elements for that damage to accumulate, just as it would take decades of exposure for the bricks in the wall of a building to get cracked and chipped.
Thank you for explaining that to me so well. 
I guess it's just a peculiarity of the Genesis device, then.
I guess it's just a peculiarity of the Genesis device, then.
There it is.
The only thing missing was Nimoy passing the baton to some younger actor...
