| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"maff" |
| Date: |
17 Nov 2005 09:03:39 PM |
| Object: |
The Ghost in Your Genes |
The Ghost in Your Genes
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/ghostgenes.shtml
The scientists who believe your genes are shaped in part by your
ancestors' life experiences.
Biology stands on the brink of a shift in the understanding of
inheritance. The discovery of epigenetics - hidden influences upon
the genes - could affect every aspect of our lives.
At the heart of this new field is a simple but contentious idea -
that genes have a 'memory'. That the lives of your grandparents - the
air they breathed, the food they ate, even the things they saw - can
directly affect you, decades later, despite your never experiencing
these things yourself. And that what you do in your lifetime could in
turn affect your grandchildren.
Horizon
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/index.shtml
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| User: "John Baker" |
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| Title: Re: The Ghost in Your Genes |
17 Nov 2005 09:42:06 PM |
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On 17 Nov 2005 13:03:39 -0800, "maff" <maff91@yahoo.com> wrote:
The Ghost in Your Genes
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/ghostgenes.shtml
The scientists who believe your genes are shaped in part by your
ancestors' life experiences.
Biology stands on the brink of a shift in the understanding of
inheritance. The discovery of epigenetics - hidden influences upon
the genes - could affect every aspect of our lives.
At the heart of this new field is a simple but contentious idea -
that genes have a 'memory'. That the lives of your grandparents - the
air they breathed, the food they ate, even the things they saw - can
directly affect you, decades later, despite your never experiencing
these things yourself. And that what you do in your lifetime could in
turn affect your grandchildren.
Horizon
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/index.shtml
Sounds like a modern variation of Lamarckism to me.
Let's just say I'm skeptical....
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| User: "John Wilkins" |
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| Title: Re: The Ghost in Your Genes |
18 Nov 2005 12:15:56 AM |
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John Baker wrote:
On 17 Nov 2005 13:03:39 -0800, "maff" <maff91@yahoo.com> wrote:
The Ghost in Your Genes
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/ghostgenes.shtml
The scientists who believe your genes are shaped in part by your
ancestors' life experiences.
Biology stands on the brink of a shift in the understanding of
inheritance. The discovery of epigenetics - hidden influences upon
the genes - could affect every aspect of our lives.
At the heart of this new field is a simple but contentious idea -
that genes have a 'memory'. That the lives of your grandparents - the
air they breathed, the food they ate, even the things they saw - can
directly affect you, decades later, despite your never experiencing
these things yourself. And that what you do in your lifetime could in
turn affect your grandchildren.
Horizon
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/index.shtml
Sounds like a modern variation of Lamarckism to me.
Let's just say I'm skeptical....
It is often sold as Lamarckism. But it is both trivially true (there are
indeed inherited patterns affected by life experiences, particularly in
methylation patterns) and evolutionarily insignificant so far as I can tell.
--
John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Biohumanities Project
University of Queensland - Blog: evolvethought.blogspot.com
"Darwin's theory has no more to do with philosophy than any other
hypothesis in natural science." Tractatus 4.1122
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| User: "Nightshade" |
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| Title: Re: The Ghost in Your Genes |
19 Nov 2005 05:47:30 PM |
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On Thu, 17 Nov 2005 21:42:06 GMT, John Baker <nunya@bizniz.net> wrote:
On 17 Nov 2005 13:03:39 -0800, "maff" <maff91@yahoo.com> wrote:
The Ghost in Your Genes
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/ghostgenes.shtml
The scientists who believe your genes are shaped in part by your
ancestors' life experiences.
Biology stands on the brink of a shift in the understanding of
inheritance. The discovery of epigenetics - hidden influences upon
the genes - could affect every aspect of our lives.
At the heart of this new field is a simple but contentious idea -
that genes have a 'memory'. That the lives of your grandparents - the
air they breathed, the food they ate, even the things they saw - can
directly affect you, decades later, despite your never experiencing
these things yourself. And that what you do in your lifetime could in
turn affect your grandchildren.
Horizon
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/index.shtml
Sounds like a modern variation of Lamarckism to me.
Let's just say I'm skeptical....
A subconscious, ancestral memory, what a useful idea.
People don't believe in gods because they are, whatever kind of idiot
you think them. Oh no. People believe in gods, because the memory of
their god's reality, is in their ancestral memory.
Somebody will try it.
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| User: "r norman" |
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| Title: Re: The Ghost in Your Genes |
17 Nov 2005 10:01:12 PM |
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On Thu, 17 Nov 2005 21:42:06 GMT, John Baker <nunya@bizniz.net> wrote:
On 17 Nov 2005 13:03:39 -0800, "maff" <maff91@yahoo.com> wrote:
The Ghost in Your Genes
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/ghostgenes.shtml
The scientists who believe your genes are shaped in part by your
ancestors' life experiences.
Biology stands on the brink of a shift in the understanding of
inheritance. The discovery of epigenetics - hidden influences upon
the genes - could affect every aspect of our lives.
At the heart of this new field is a simple but contentious idea -
that genes have a 'memory'. That the lives of your grandparents - the
air they breathed, the food they ate, even the things they saw - can
directly affect you, decades later, despite your never experiencing
these things yourself. And that what you do in your lifetime could in
turn affect your grandchildren.
Horizon
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/index.shtml
Sounds like a modern variation of Lamarckism to me.
Let's just say I'm skeptical....
As is always the case, the press release is far more lurid than the
science behind the release. Extreme stress is well known to generate
responses that influence gene regulation. If those effects were to
extend to the egg cell, then embryos might well have a different
pattern of gene expression imposed on them through maternal
cytoplasmic factors (or gene marking). Hence epigenetics; inheritance
outside the genomic sequence. That genetic regulatory switches can be
inherited leads to the possibility that such events can extend several
generations until they finally get erased or reset. There are
mechanisms known or proposed and there are experimental tests possible
for this process, not to mention some evidence that it may occur.
That is sounds like Lamarckism is not a reason to reject it. Lamarck
was rejected because there was no mechanism to account for it. Now
there is a mechanism.
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| User: "Bobby D. Bryant" |
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| Title: Re: The Ghost in Your Genes |
17 Nov 2005 10:50:12 PM |
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On Thu, 17 Nov 2005, John Baker <nunya@bizniz.net> wrote:
On 17 Nov 2005 13:03:39 -0800, "maff" <maff91@yahoo.com> wrote:
The Ghost in Your Genes
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/ghostgenes.shtml
The scientists who believe your genes are shaped in part by your
ancestors' life experiences.
Biology stands on the brink of a shift in the understanding of
inheritance. The discovery of epigenetics - hidden influences upon
the genes - could affect every aspect of our lives.
At the heart of this new field is a simple but contentious idea -
that genes have a 'memory'. That the lives of your grandparents -
the air they breathed, the food they ate, even the things they saw -
can directly affect you, decades later, despite your never
experiencing these things yourself. And that what you do in your
lifetime could in turn affect your grandchildren.
Horizon
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/index.shtml
Sounds like a modern variation of Lamarckism to me.
Let's just say I'm skeptical....
IANABiologist, but I don't think that's a very good (or even correct)
description of what epigenetics is all about.
At the heart of epigenetics, AIUI, is that you inherit not only the
DNA of your parents, but an entire working system from your mother.
I.e., all the cellular machinery that makes DNA do stuff.
--
Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas
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