Theory Suggests That All Genes Affect Every Complex Trait • Hacker News Board

Re: Theory Suggests That All Genes Affect Every Complex Trait

#121

Post by dkural » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 8:39 PM UTC

resource0x wrote: post #120

dkural wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a great question! As you know, DNA -> RNA -> Protein where the first arrow is transcription (polymerase) & the second one translation. Genes are transcribed by a polymerase, and a couple of factors determine if the polymerase can be "recruited" there. Here are a couple of those factors: 1) Is the site accessible? That part of the genome needs to be "open chromatin" for it to be transcribed. Next question of co…

Thank you, the article is fascinating indeed. But your explanation is not very accessible for a layman. I will tell you the questions a typical programmer will be asking: Main question: suppose we have to build a heart from scratch. It has certain shape, at every point inside it, there's a specific type of cell (they are all certainly different). E.g., there's a complicated network of blood vessels inside, and what n…

While this is not my specialty, the field of "evo-devo" and developmental biology is the field trying to answer those questions. Honestly, we still know very little about how the genome results in morphology.

It is a lot more like a cellular automaton than anything else. From minute gradient differences inside the fertilized egg, recursively structure spreads out in very much a cellular automata like fashion. Cells respond to the bio-mechanical stress around them and to the signals they bathe in, to decide cellular fate, and in turn release new signals..

It's a very different paradigm of computation than the one we think of. Each cell is like a docker instance, containing the full source code. Perhaps these links explain a bit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQ6vkDr_Dec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mCgHK-X6lE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaZOdrU1Du0

Re: Theory Suggests That All Genes Affect Every Complex Trait

#122

Post by raincom » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 11:42 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #81

raincom wrote: post #54

A similar debate goes on in Cognitive Neuroscience and/or neuropsychology/neurophysiology: can cognitive phenomena--like emotion, learning, memory, affect, etc--be localized in the brain? can fMRI solve this localization-distribution issue? 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 inpu…

Then there’s the problem that fMRI is hardly providing us with a complete view of everything going on in the brain. The same goes for the other instruments we have. Who knows what parts of the puzzle we’re not yet even seeing?

Think of thermometer, which everyone of us uses. It doesn't tell much about what is going on inside, but it tells us that something is NOT normal esp out of normal body temp range. Does fMRI play the role of thermometer? Yes when there are injuries; but injury itself plays the role of the thermometer.

fMRI is not useful in settling the disputes about how brain makes the mind--esp higher cognitive processes.

Re: Theory Suggests That All Genes Affect Every Complex Trait

#123

Post by resource0x » Tue, Jun 26, 2018, 12:44 AM UTC

dkural wrote: post #121

resource0x wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, the article is fascinating indeed. But your explanation is not very accessible for a layman. I will tell you the questions a typical programmer will be asking: Main question: suppose we have to build a heart from scratch. It has certain shape, at every point inside it, there's a specific type of cell (they are all certainly different). E.g., there's a complicated network of blood vessels inside, and what n…

While this is not my specialty, the field of "evo-devo" and developmental biology is the field trying to answer those questions. Honestly, we still know very little about how the genome results in morphology. It is a lot more like a cellular automaton than anything else. From minute gradient differences inside the fertilized egg, recursively structure spreads out in very much a cellular automata like fashion. Cells r…

Analog computer switching to digital mode, and back to analog, and back to digital, etc... ? Something is extremely fishy here. Looks like highly intelligent series of operations, much beyond whatever we can imagine.

Re: Theory Suggests That All Genes Affect Every Complex Trait

#124

Post by polski-g » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 1:12 PM UTC

nonbel wrote: post #112

polski-g wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't even need that. Later this year BGI will allow you to submit zygotes and they'll provide a 23andme compatible report. And you can plug that in to dnaland and find out which zygote you should select for the most intelligent offspring.

Well that is almost surely fake. This is like a list of companies whose stocks should be shorted in (at what age is intelligence determined? 5 years?) as the lawsuits come rolling in.

Intelligence at adulthood is determined by genes. The same organization can predict height within one inch (again, based on genes).

Re: Theory Suggests That All Genes Affect Every Complex Trait

#125

Post by biot » Fri, Jun 29, 2018, 4:13 PM UTC

wrycoder wrote: post #60

biot wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/sftriple/gpic.html (1989)

Just saw this and finished reading... thanks for linking it. Great story!