51–60 of 125 posts
I was hoping CRISPR/Cas9 (or some similar system) was going to answer many prayers. Maybe this means it's less likely?
There's a couple of things that are slowly changing in the thinking of biologists related to this: 1. Genes are not loci. The "one gene = one protein" dogma of molecular biology (expanded: "one trait selectable in breeding experiments = one compact locus of the chromosome") was a priori wrong, but it's taken us decades to undo the damage. We were led astray because there are traits that do map to a single locus, or s…
Whatever we have known so far, early phases of the input system (sensory) and later phases of the output system (motor) can be localized. Even there is an overlap between the input and the output system.
A couple of comments from a non-biologist. It seems to me that this is an example of a common pattern in biological research. A simple explanation is developed for a phenomena, but then as time goes on, it turns out that in at least some important ways things are much more complicated than originally thought. Also, the article talks about the controversy between the view that all genes make tiny causal contributions…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Presumably they mean that material evolution doesn't involve ideas, which is what abstractions are. This is a physicalist line to take which implies that the universe is entirely material, and abstraction is just something human minds perceive.
> ...abstraction is just something human minds perceive. This itself is a physical phenomenon :)
Two things: 1. The theory of "junk DNA" of which the authors received Nobel Price is increasingly looking like...well...junk. 2. The recent discovery of Epigenetics adds a whole other dimension for understanding traits and genetics. Lots of biological science needs to be rewritten/updated in the years to come.
#2 is perhaps one of the most confounding recent areas of research that really starts complicating the study of DNA and how changes to it map to an organism's outcome in the real world over time and in different environments. As new studies emerge on identical twins/triplets/etc., it has become clear that even identical DNA does not at all have 100% clone of the person, even if they do in fact share the same DNA. Ran…
New studies weren't needed; this has been known forever. From The Blank Slate:
> Even genetically homogeneous strains of flies, mice, and worms, raised in monotonously controlled laboratories, can differ from one another. A fruit fly may have more or fewer bristles under one wing than its bottlemates. One mouse may have three times as many oocytes (cells destined to become eggs) as her genetically identical sister reared in the same lab. One roundworm may live three times as long as its virtual clone in the next dish. The biologist Steven Austad commented on the roundworms' lifespans: "Astonishingly, the degree of variability they exhibit in longevity is not much less than that of a genetically mixed population of humans, who eat a variety of diets, attend to or abuse their health, and are subject to all the vagaries of circumstance -- car crashes, tainted beef, enraged postal workers -- of modern industrialized life." And a roundworm is composed of only 959 cells!
There's a couple of things that are slowly changing in the thinking of biologists related to this: 1. Genes are not loci. The "one gene = one protein" dogma of molecular biology (expanded: "one trait selectable in breeding experiments = one compact locus of the chromosome") was a priori wrong, but it's taken us decades to undo the damage. We were led astray because there are traits that do map to a single locus, or s…
That is a very profound observation. It suggests a way that one can distinguish between something that evolved vs something that was designed.
There's a couple of things that are slowly changing in the thinking of biologists related to this: 1. Genes are not loci. The "one gene = one protein" dogma of molecular biology (expanded: "one trait selectable in breeding experiments = one compact locus of the chromosome") was a priori wrong, but it's taken us decades to undo the damage. We were led astray because there are traits that do map to a single locus, or s…
> Evolution doesn't abstract. That is a very profound observation. It suggests a way that one can distinguish between something that evolved vs something that was designed.
There's a couple of things that are slowly changing in the thinking of biologists related to this: 1. Genes are not loci. The "one gene = one protein" dogma of molecular biology (expanded: "one trait selectable in breeding experiments = one compact locus of the chromosome") was a priori wrong, but it's taken us decades to undo the damage. We were led astray because there are traits that do map to a single locus, or s…
I often think of that scene in Contact where they are trying to decrypt the alien message: https://youtu.be/HgPSUer1ujM Multiple genetic materials operating on multiple levels...