Board Thread:Theories and Speculation/@comment-27082825-20150116155842/@comment-1458758-20150123045911

Well I find that that still makes your theory problematic. Since, as you say, there's no middle ground with Chakra natures, by that same merit, there's Lava Release, then there's Scorch Release, then there's Dust release, it has traits distinct from any other style. So, as you brought up with Kekkei Mora, I think we have to look at this more fundamentally.

It's less Onoki has three pieces that fit together and Mei has two that don't. It's more like they both have three bricks, but Mei can only stack two bricks at a time and Onoki can stack all three, then Kaguya can stack all the bricks, cause she's a brick hoarding skank like that.

Analogies are hard....

Again though, I think we're applying a bit too much of real world genetics here, as in a field of expertise we should really assume ignorance on behalf of the author. Especially since, as was brought up, the Koga Ninja Scrolls was the inspiration for these abilities, and in their story, they were produced via inbreeding, producing these powers despite a lack of genetic diversity. So the idea that we could be dealing with a flawed principle derived from a flawed principle should be taken into consideration.

Having said that, I wouldn't dismiss the possibility that Dust Release was engineered, as Mu and Onoki are the only ones who can use it, and even Onoki has standards. Assuming that this process is not delicate or particularly efficient with all of two successes, one could easily assume that Iwa was losing more military power than it was gaining with each failure, after all by Orochimaru's time, his succcess rate with Yamato was like one in sixty, and with his later curse mark, only one in ten. Not to mention, we're talking about a project that could require literal lifetimes in the making, so wasting resources on it while things like war and the like were happening could be considered wasteful, some that Onoki, with his 'of both scales' title could be hesitant to invest more effort into without guaranteed results.

We do have to consider that while Iwa and Kumo are the more ruthless and militant states remaining by the start of the series, Kumo was the one that was thriving out of the pair, while Iwa was in decline, being forced to hire out to Akatsuki. So the assumption that just because they're ruthless, that they necessarily have the resources to replicate the likes of Mu and Onoki, hazards be damned is a logical fallacy in itself.