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http://www.newsweek.com/id/180103?gt1=43002
Apparently, experiences that parents undergo can affect the genes passed
on to their children.
For instance, the diets of lab mice have been shown to activate or mask
certain portions of their DNA.
This makes sense to me - after all, DNA is just a bunch of molecules, so
I would think there are a number of things (and dietary habits would be
close to the top of the list) that affect genes.
The real head-scratcher is the case of the water-fleas, who are born
with or without helmets depending on their mother's experiences with
predators. Specifically, the fact that in both cases their DNA is
identical. The only thing I can think of is that the mother's
experiences trigger a certain set of hormones which are present during
development of the eggs, resulting in the presence or absence of
helmets.
...Ben Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com
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"Chambers" <ben### [at] pacificwebguy com> wrote:
> http://www.newsweek.com/id/180103?gt1=43002
>
> Apparently, experiences that parents undergo can affect the genes passed
> on to their children.
>
> For instance, the diets of lab mice have been shown to activate or mask
> certain portions of their DNA.
>
> The real head-scratcher is the case of the water-fleas, who are born
> with or without helmets depending on their mother's experiences with
> predators.
But only to a certain extent, as in both cases it is contributing to activate or
deactivate some "switch" which is already there. After all, it seems normal for
water-fleas (never heard of them before) to have helmet or not.
It isn't something as drastic as someone pulling the neck of an animal and
producing giraffe-like descendants... ;)
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Chambers wrote:
> http://www.newsweek.com/id/180103?gt1=43002
>
>
>
> Apparently, experiences that parents undergo can affect the genes passed
> on to their children.
>
>
>
> For instance, the diets of lab mice have been shown to activate or mask
> certain portions of their DNA.
>
>
>
> This makes sense to me - after all, DNA is just a bunch of molecules, so
> I would think there are a number of things (and dietary habits would be
> close to the top of the list) that affect genes.
>
>
>
> The real head-scratcher is the case of the water-fleas, who are born
> with or without helmets depending on their mother's experiences with
> predators. Specifically, the fact that in both cases their DNA is
> identical. The only thing I can think of is that the mother's
> experiences trigger a certain set of hormones which are present during
> development of the eggs, resulting in the presence or absence of
> helmets.
>
>
>
> ...Ben Chambers
>
Reading the "original" documents, instead of the hatchet job that news
magazines inevitably do on such things, you would be 100% right. Gene
expression is "always" effected by hormonal changes in a parent. This
can be as complex as, in humans, each "birth" changing a specific
hormone, which "ironically", seems to increase, each time, the odds of
someone with otherwise "male" genes, expressing female tendencies and
sexual preferences. (in other words, if you are the 7th male child in a
family, you are *significantly* less likely to be someone that produces
a lot of babies than the 1st, due to not being attracted to women. OR,
it can be simply some "minor" alteration of the mix of chemicals left in
a batch of eggs, laid in a river bottom, which just triggers a dormant
gene set. Evolution doesn't throw things out, even if they are broken,
unless it either a) turns it into something else, b) it become so broken
that it gets "no operation" type code attached to both ends, and never
gets run again, or c) chance results in it being traded out, or deleted,
some place in the process. There are messes of code laying around that
"would" do thing, if the hormonal triggers where "tweaked" slightly,
like the chickens in China that have a minor glitch, which causes
feather that are halfway between fur and truth feathers, or experiments
run on chickens that show that a "minor" change in how long a certain
hormone is active can induce production of a dinosaur like tail (but,
probably fowl up other growth patterns that have also become dependent
on the new "turn off" point).
Uncommon Descent has already been posting wildly on this, claiming it
proves that, "god front loads things for future changes", and spooled up
their FTT (fast than truth) comment deletion system to remove everyone
that tries to explain what the study really showed or meant. That the
people often hired to write articles for major news magazines/papers are
almost as clueless and totally disinteresting in getting their facts
straight, is not helping matters, whenever something like this pops up. :(
--
void main () {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
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