Building on that VS, DNA was barely discovered by Watson and Crick when TOS fan, so we should be able to work the implications of the growing body of knowledge of genetics into what we have done before.

We don’t hold Star Trek back from incorporating advances in real life scientific and technological knowledge.

For example, growing understanding in nanotechnology informed many elements of 1990s Trek. We didn’t say that nanotechnology shouldn’t be referenced just because it wasn’t referenced in TOS.

In fact, Roddenberry insisted that Star Trek always be a possible future for the viewers and insisted on changes and corrections to address changes in knowledge.

In the case of what we saw in this episode, knowledge of epigenetics, an entire domain of understanding that has developed in this century, informed the situation.

Epigenetics can be defined as “The study of the processes involved in the genetic development of an organism, especially the activation and deactivation of genes.”

We were told by Una that, because the Karkovian serum was derived from Spock’s DNA it reflected Spock’s experience. This means certain Vulcan genetic traits were already ‘switched on’ by environmental factors, that could include experiences like meditation, that would lead to ‘switching on’ the genes that enable functioning of the specific Vulcan brain structures noted in Voyager.