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There, their or they're? Genuinely uncertain.

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Daud Deden

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Jul 22, 2021, 11:47:13 PM7/22/21
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In my post below about marine mammals, I hit a bump when I couldn't decide which fits best, their, there or they're. Can anyone inform about this specific term in this context?

You should see the article at Natl Geographic about the 3 main marine mammal groups sharing a disabled gene [PON?] which is normal in terrestrial fauna and in humans. It relates to there being very susceptible to organophosphate pesticides.

The link may be garbled:

https://email.nationalgeographic.com/T/v60000017acb1d775c927b3a6e965fd798/eb29510d22f544100000021ef3a0bccc/eb29510d-22f5-4410-b9e1-d85f5d2091dd?__dU__=v0G4RBKTXg2GtTHJDsy7ii3waBSrIwMXGZJ7x_OARFKFQAIe3mwx22JG_r9Sy1LWLGyMVrrFIdudbYjwKGAKz6iTAgyV5XAM3SbSN-FzJU9XXpFWtSFRxbGw4nHcgLdnvWYAVcbDlQyQtE1-NmUBscmA==&__F__=v0fUYvjHMDjRPMSh3tviDHXIoXcPxvDgUUCCPvXMWoX_0JoZLAZABQF30xF0sKPois3VqfW5bf1WlfvPhqF6LHwC5xiRF0xcvsc-DbKubeM0As6Ws1uwJNLakU7NOw2O2-gsAbmJc9vziDnObfTkVrhiEulGrWvRJAG6x5a5vjnUGYf2Jc8_cX2x8tz1bIObefgURCZaui9k5FSidUILWLdzKWuSrRmSOK8R1cl4UR3e-vPcq6YO-3mDADRrLjdWyP5gvOnK7Swhd_Go8V6YiCXVQXzMV3dwvkToQ2NoTo4w-1lkaaaoosBPE6LkIXfT22kdlAjoU-lFhBslkd4mJp-Rp_rSmIT8v1pXdrGgUr-26NjT0bW8ueSYtx1DjyxvcS-xxACbGgZDG2ydrjQXju5ItC00z3gNR4Tamkpl_MglICTG5dmwz0ClE6gUMGGtRRmvo7d6ZXJIhuwfUoXOuWqXG8eO5Qb90IWJ4d0QteE8LYvrYi1kDPL2to45LqPkJq9dlfPkfTfAWeLf7I6TFHoLqhyPBBQOkkwlxETqL6GDerckprJBzUlR_uX6Iy1EYCZeMnruaMKl_WtU1B7Cua5A==

Ross Clark

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Jul 23, 2021, 1:35:14 AM7/23/21
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On 23/07/2021 3:47 p.m., Daud Deden wrote:
> In my post below about marine mammals, I hit a bump when I couldn't decide which fits best, their, there or they're. Can anyone inform about this specific term in this context?
>
> You should see the article at Natl Geographic about the 3 main marine mammal groups sharing a disabled gene [PON?] which is normal in terrestrial fauna and in humans. It relates to there being very susceptible to organophosphate pesticides.

"Their" is what you want there. Neither "there" nor "they're" would make
grammatical sense.
"They are susceptible to..." nominalizes as "their being susceptible
to...", with the subject (they) being turned into a possessive (their).


> The link may be garbled:
>
> https://email.nationalgeographic.com/T/v60000017acb1d775c927b3a6e965fd798/eb29510d22f544100000021ef3a0bccc/eb29510d-22f5-4410-b9e1-d85f5d2091dd?__dU__=v0G4RBKTXg2GtTHJDsy7ii3waBSrIwMXGZJ7x_OARFKFQAIe3mwx22JG_r9Sy1LWLGyMVrrFIdudbYjwKGAKz6iTAgyV5XAM3SbSN-FzJU9XXpFWtSFRxbGw4nHcgLdnvWYAVcbDlQyQtE1-NmUBscmA==&__F__=v0fUYvjHMDjRPMSh3tviDHXIoXcPxvDgUUCCPvXMWoX_0JoZLAZABQF30xF0sKPois3VqfW5bf1WlfvPhqF6LHwC5xiRF0xcvsc-DbKubeM0As6Ws1uwJNLakU7NOw2O2-gsAbmJc9vziDnObfTkVrhiEulGrWvRJAG6x5a5vjnUGYf2Jc8_cX2x8tz1bIObefgURCZaui9k5FSidUILWLdzKWuSrRmSOK8R1cl4UR3e-vPcq6YO-3mDADRrLjdWyP5gvOnK7Swhd_Go8V6YiCXVQXzMV3dwvkToQ2NoTo4w-1lkaaaoosBPE6LkIXfT22kdlAjoU-lFhBslkd4mJp-Rp_rSmIT8v1pXdrGgUr-26NjT0bW8ueSYtx1DjyxvcS-xxACbGgZDG2ydrjQXju5ItC00z3gNR4Tamkpl_MglICTG5dmwz0ClE6gUMGGtRRmvo7d6ZXJIhuwfUoXOuWqXG8eO5Qb90IWJ4d0QteE8LYvrYi1kDPL2to45LqPkJq9dlfPkfTfAWeLf7I6TFHoLqhyPBBQOkkwlxETqL6GDerckprJBzUlR_uX6Iy1EYCZeMnruaMKl_WtU1B7Cua5A==

Link worked OK for me.

Daud Deden

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Jul 23, 2021, 4:55:44 AM7/23/21
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On Friday, July 23, 2021 at 1:35:14 AM UTC-4, benl...@ihug.co.nz wrote:
> On 23/07/2021 3:47 p.m., Daud Deden wrote:
> > In my post below about marine mammals, I hit a bump when I couldn't decide which fits best, their, there or they're. Can anyone inform about this specific term in this context?
> >
> > You should see the article at Natl Geographic about the 3 main marine mammal groups sharing a disabled gene [PON?] which is normal in terrestrial fauna and in humans. It relates to there being very susceptible to organophosphate pesticides.
> "Their" is what you want there. Neither "there" nor "they're" would make
> grammatical sense.

Ok. Somehow "their" appeared wrong semantically, so I changed it to "there", but that looked wrong grammatically, so I tried " they're" for 'there are' (not they are) which didn't look right either.

It relates to the condition of them all being very susceptible...
Sounds odd/vulgar

It relates to the condition of all of them being very susceptible...
Sounds best, but lengthy. "Their" appears to be the contraction of " the condition of all of them".

> "They are susceptible to..." nominalizes as "their being susceptible
> to...", with the subject (they) being turned into a possessive (their).
> > The link may be garbled:
> >
> > https://email.nationalgeographic.com/T/v60000017acb1d775c927b3a6e965fd798/eb29510d22f544100000021ef3a0bccc/eb29510d-22f5-4410-b9e1-d85f5d2091dd?__dU__=v0G4RBKTXg2GtTHJDsy7ii3waBSrIwMXGZJ7x_OARFKFQAIe3mwx22JG_r9Sy1LWLGyMVrrFIdudbYjwKGAKz6iTAgyV5XAM3SbSN-FzJU9XXpFWtSFRxbGw4nHcgLdnvWYAVcbDlQyQtE1-NmUBscmA==&__F__=v0fUYvjHMDjRPMSh3tviDHXIoXcPxvDgUUCCPvXMWoX_0JoZLAZABQF30xF0sKPois3VqfW5bf1WlfvPhqF6LHwC5xiRF0xcvsc-DbKubeM0As6Ws1uwJNLakU7NOw2O2-gsAbmJc9vziDnObfTkVrhiEulGrWvRJAG6x5a5vjnUGYf2Jc8_cX2x8tz1bIObefgURCZaui9k5FSidUILWLdzKWuSrRmSOK8R1cl4UR3e-vPcq6YO-3mDADRrLjdWyP5gvOnK7Swhd_Go8V6YiCXVQXzMV3dwvkToQ2NoTo4w-1lkaaaoosBPE6LkIXfT22kdlAjoU-lFhBslkd4mJp-Rp_rSmIT8v1pXdrGgUr-26NjT0bW8ueSYtx1DjyxvcS-xxACbGgZDG2ydrjQXju5ItC00z3gNR4Tamkpl_MglICTG5dmwz0ClE6gUMGGtRRmvo7d6ZXJIhuwfUoXOuWqXG8eO5Qb90IWJ4d0QteE8LYvrYi1kDPL2to45LqPkJq9dlfPkfTfAWeLf7I6TFHoLqhyPBBQOkkwlxETqL6GDerckprJBzUlR_uX6Iy1EYCZeMnruaMKl_WtU1B7Cua5A==
> Link worked OK for me.

Thanks.

Ruud Harmsen via Google Groups <google@rudhar.com>

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Jul 28, 2021, 2:06:25 AM7/28/21
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On Friday, July 23, 2021 at 5:47:13 AM UTC+2, daud....@gmail.com wrote:
> In my post below about marine mammals, I hit a bump when I couldn't decide which fits best, their, there or they're. Can anyone inform about this specific term in this context?
>
> You should see the article at Natl Geographic about the 3 main marine mammal groups sharing a disabled gene [PON?] which is normal in terrestrial fauna and in humans. It relates to there being very susceptible to organophosphate pesticides.

‘Their’ is the only possibility.
‘There’ would be possible if ‘to’ in the rest of the sentence were missing.
‘They're being’ is grammatically possible, but not here, because after "It relates to" a phrase is needed that functions as a noun.

Dingbat

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Jul 30, 2021, 4:30:50 AM7/30/21
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What is a disabled gene? it doesn't seem to mean a gene composed of junk DNA and thereby unable to serve a useful purpose
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAB1

Daud Deden

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Jul 30, 2021, 5:48:38 AM7/30/21
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Typically, the gene is unable to direct the correct fabrication of a protein, due to a mutation in its code. AFAIK.

António Marques

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Aug 2, 2021, 5:22:28 AM8/2/21
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>>> Link worked OK for me.
>
> What is a disabled gene?

Within the context that would be a gene that got broken and hence unable to
be translated.


> it doesn't seem to mean a gene composed of junk DNA

There is no such thing as 'junk DNA', that's what some people call parts of
the DNA that they don't know the purpose of - but being of unknown purpose
is a property of the observer, not of the observed things.


> and thereby unable to serve a useful purpose
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAB1

That's a gene that has 'Disabled' in its name. The names of genes are
sometimes adjectives, but the adjective rarely refers to the gene itself.


Athel Cornish-Bowden

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Aug 2, 2021, 7:39:08 AM8/2/21
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Tell that to Sydney Brenner (except that it's too late for that). The
problem with supposing that all DNA has a function even if we don't
know what that function is is that it fails to explain why lungfish
have more than 40 times more DNA than you do: are they 40 times more
complex than you? Onions, too, why does an onion plant need five times
as much DNA as you?
>
>
>> and thereby unable to serve a useful purpose
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAB1
>
> That's a gene that has 'Disabled' in its name. The names of genes are
> sometimes adjectives, but the adjective rarely refers to the gene itself.


--
Athel -- French and British, living mainly in England until 1987.

António Marques

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Aug 2, 2021, 8:59:24 AM8/2/21
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The thing is that that assumes that function equals complexity, and that's
just not true for pretty much every system where we do know what the
components do. If we do know something about molecular biology - and it's a
given that you've forgotten more than I'll ever know - it's that there's
apparently unnecessary repetition everywhere we look, while on the other
hand the same molecule often has a number of unrelated functions. That
makes any hope of a linear relation between the number of components and
the complexity of the system quite misguided.

But more to the point of what I was saying, having a label for all of the
parts of a system we don't know the purpose of is wrong, inasmuch as they
don't form a natural group other than 'the things we don't know the purpose
of', which is our problem, not a trait of theirs.
Those labels are specially inconvenient when they filter down to the
public, as the net result are ingrained pop misconceptions of how it all
works.

Adam Funk

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Aug 2, 2021, 9:00:06 AM8/2/21
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Joke from Donald Knuth:

Don't take me seriously, but I have a hunch that when the unknown
parts of the DNA are decoded, the so-called sequences of junk DNA,
they're going to turn out to be copyright notices and patent
protections.



>>> and thereby unable to serve a useful purpose
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAB1
>>
>> That's a gene that has 'Disabled' in its name. The names of genes are
>> sometimes adjectives, but the adjective rarely refers to the gene itself.
>
>


--
My destination is a secret
And the doctrine is soft
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