So, Lamarck was right after all. Do we owe him an apology?

[Larv]

We have quite a bit more than mere speculation. Science has shown how we can assemble life from naturally occuring elements. (See the wiki on Abiogenesis)

Ah, hold one there. I don't believe science has shown us "how we can assemble life from naturally occuring elements." Not yet! And I don't really care what wiki says about abiogenesis, because the misinformation about it runs rampant. The raw fact is that science cannot make life from scratch. There has never been a Miller-Urey experiment for abiogenesis. When that happens we'll have to reset the calendar. Abiogenesis remains as big a mystery as the Big Bang.

[freeztar]

Ah, hold one there.

 

Sorry, no can do.

 

Researchers synthesized the basic ingredients of RNA, a molecule from which the simplest self-replicating structures are made. Until now, they couldn’t explain how these ingredients might have formed.

 

“It’s like molecular choreography, where the molecules choreograph their own behavior,” said organic chemist John Sutherland of the University of Manchester, co-author of a study in Nature Wednesday.

 

RNA is now found in living cells, where it carries information between genes and protein-manufacturing cellular components. Scientists think RNA existed early in Earth’s history, providing a necessary intermediate platform between pre-biotic chemicals and DNA, its double-stranded, more-stable descendant.

Life’s First Spark Re-Created in the Laboratory | Wired Science | Wired.com

 

I don't believe science has shown us "how we can assemble life from naturally occuring elements." Not yet!

 

Well, you're correct of course. Not yet...

 

And I don't really care what wiki says about abiogenesis, because the misinformation about it runs rampant. The raw fact is that science cannot make life from scratch. There has never been a Miller-Urey experiment for abiogenesis. When that happens we'll have to reset the calendar. Abiogenesis remains as big a mystery as the Big Bang.

 

I disagree. Abiogenesis is a bigger mystery than the BB. :naughty:

[freeztar]

Here's a recent news article on epigenetics citing 100 studies that demonstrate epigenetic inheritance rather than genetic inheritance.

 

Lamarck revisited

 

New evidence for epigenetic inheritance has profound implications for the study of evolution, Jablonka and Raz say.

 

"Incorporating epigenetic inheritance into evolutionary theory extends the scope of evolutionary thinking and leads to notions of heredity and evolution that incorporate development," they write.

 

This is a vindication of sorts for 18th century naturalist Jean Baptiste Lamarck. Lamarck, whose writings on evolution predated Charles Darwin's, believed that evolution was driven in part by the inheritance of acquired traits. His classic example was the giraffe. Giraffe ancestors, Lamarck surmised, reached with their necks to munch leaves high in trees. The reaching caused their necks to become slightly longer—a trait that was passed on to descendants. Generation after generation inherited slightly longer necks, and the result is what we see in giraffes today.

 

With the advent of Mendelian genetics and the later discovery of DNA, Lamarck's ideas fell out of favor entirely. Research on epigenetics, while yet to uncover anything as dramatic as Lamarck's giraffes, does suggest that acquired traits can be heritable, and that Lamarck was not so wrong after all.

Epigenetics: 100 Reasons To Change The Way We Think About Genetics

[Larv]

I disagree. Abiogenesis is a bigger mystery than the BB.

 

Agreed!

 

freeztar, I really like this field of epigenetics for its boldness. But I sense a “true belief” about it that is troubling to me. I think it is possible if not likely that many genes have latent possibilities of expression, either singularly or in combination, giving them a heritable variety of combined genetic expressions that could amount to a permutation of traits. This possibility I would call genetic predisposition. I think it trumps evo-devo in many cases.

 

Also working against the advocates of “developmental plasticity,” as West-Eberhard calls it, is Gould’s principle of “exaptation,” whereby a trait can be an emergent property of a latent gene, or one formerly coded for another protein, or a combination thereof.

 

The evo-devo folks do not address the overriding possibility of genetic predisposition well enough, IMO. I am an eager reader on the subject, and I keep asking for another Occam’s Razor to come along and shave off this epigenetic fluff and expose the long reach of the gene. Dawkins does a good job of it.