ZGene

"This disease is going to destroy everything we've built up here. We colonized the asteroids and the gas giants on nothing but grit and trust. We knew we could trust the other guy, because we knew he wanted to prosper and he didn't want to die, just like us. We trusted technology to bring us a brighter future. But that trust is gone now. People are afraid... they're afraid of what's going to happen next... I've just heard that some people are demanding to review their partner's genetic records before they get hitched."

"...I realize that ZGene hit us where we hurt the most. But you people out there, baying for blood, you have no idea the kind of future you're bringing about."

- Jimbo Haddock, mid-2100s-era political commentator and radio personality

ZGene is the name for both a class of in utero gene therapies with near-universal adoption in Human space colonies prior to the Interplanetary War, and for a recessive gene created by the therapy. The gene therapy minimized the musculoskeletal and cardiovascular atrophy caused by microgravity. Because it allowed Humans to live normal lives in microgravity, ZGene was commonly credited with making space colonization possible for billions of people. However, ZGene caused infertility when both recessive genes were expressed in a woman.

The economic, and social fallout from this side effect ravaged Sol's outer colonies throughout the mid-2100s, ending the Golden Age of Space Colonization and giving rise to extremist political movements like the Frieden.