a little epigenetics for a change

They influence gene expression - the phenotype - rather than the genetic information which gets passed on for an indefinite number of generations - the genotype.

John Larkin's superficial appreciation of the science involved lets him down again ...

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Now I recall Larkin's prior Lamarckian views and his ideas about DNA __'execution' mechanisms__.

Jon

What's hilarious is that ever since Watson and Crick announced the structure of DNA, it was gospel that everything was coded in four base pairs. But it turns out that there are six, at least. Forty to fifty years of bad chemistry, blessed by orthodoxy.

So, what's next to discover?

How soon will the lawyers use this to appeal a zillion murder convictions based on DNA evidence?

John

The whole purpose of science is to find unanswered questions and then try to find the answers to those questions. The easy stuff was done years and years ago; most new work is going to be at the edge of significance, with a great deal of argument about whether or not thus and so is a meaningful result or just chance. Ain't no answers in the back of the book. "Gospel" and "orthodoxy" need not apply.

But, for what it's worth, DNA methylation and its regulatory role has been known about, and studied, for several decades.

Lots of interesting things. Did you know that some organisms have a slightly different genetic code than the rest of us? Neat, huh?

Approximately never.

--
Rich Webb     Norfolk, VA

You seem to be referring to this work

Two chemical biologists had to work for ten years to find a couple of exotic amino acids that could be fitted into the DNA structure - and they had to tweak them to get them to work.

The fact that it took thirty to forty years before anybody bothered to look isn't exactly evidence of bad chemistry - the primary interest in DNA has always been focussed on the way it performs in living cells.

As usual, you don't know what you are talking about, and have managed to misunderstand some article in your local newspaper.

A way to get right-wingers to do a bit of background reading before they post psuedo-scientific nonsense?

There are lawyers around who are as silly and ignorant as you are when it comes to biology, so we can expect a few appeals, but none of them has a hope of succeeding.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

I expect to see some really radical, rule-changing discoveries in genetics in my lifetime. And I expect to help make it happen.

John

So you change the subject and thus accept Bill's analysis? Or can you respond to his comments more directly than just to say that you have a feeling about it?

Jon

My general attitude is that anything that's not flat impossible ought to be considered and not mocked. That applies direct to ee's who design electronics, but more generally to all of science. Two good books are "The Maxwellians" (Hunt) and "How The Laser Happened" (Townes), both cases of little people challenging orthodoxy and winning.

I've been reading the classic, universally cited papers and books on the limits of sensitivity of a certain scientific instrument. Seriously wrong in a few key places. This should be fun.

And I didn't post "psuedo-scientific nonsense." Sloman, who is neither an electronics designer nor a scientists, and does nothing useful, lives to insult people who are, and who do stuff.

And what's wrong with feelings? Ever tried a formal brainstorming session? If ideas are slapped down, pretty soon you have no ideas. Fatheads Keep Out.

John

Yes, a good brainstorming session with people who aren't afraid of tossing out potentially dumb ideas can be a lot of fun, not to mention very productive.

Don't recall where I first saw this - probably on usenet, decades ago - but the 1-1000-100-10-0 rule applies in a lot of situations:

For any 1 problem there are 1000 solutions 100 of them will work and 10 of those are actually pretty good but there are 0 perfect solutions.

--
Rich Webb     Norfolk, VA

One of the formalized brainstorming sessions I attended had kids toys (Slinkys, etc,) spread out on the table for one of the sessions. The idea was to play with the toys while thinking about the topic at hand. A few patents came out of that session, though we didn't know that for a few years.

Engineering isn't about "perfect". "Pretty good" is often better than needed.

One good scheme is to not distinguish between serious ideas and jokes. Some of the jokes lead to serious ideas. Sometimes even supposedly dumb people say something that leads to valuable new ideas.

John

I wasn't arguing against feelings. I just wanted to know if that's all you had to go on, or if there was something else. I suppose I know, now. You appear not to be aware of anything specific and seem to claim that your imagination coupled with apparent ignorance on the topic other than reading a newspaper interpretation (since you couldn't address any of Bill's points) is sufficient that others should still find it persuasive.

I'm not opposed to imagination. It's important (I recently mentioned that much.) But it's not a panacea by itself (everyone has it) and it is usually useful when coupled with science knowledge to vet it before foisting it on others. You seem to become defensive every time someone asks for a little knowledge from you on this subject (I had only recently gone back and looked at the google record from you on this subject and can provide links, besides this one) and instead retreat not to knowledge but to feigned wrongs because someone might ask for more than just your ignorant say so. (I mean 'ignorant' in the strict denotation sense, not the connotation sense.) That I or anyone should require a little more than that to believe in a significant role for Lamarckian views in evolution shouldn't surprise you nor make you defensive. It should make you get well informed so that you can respond as appropriate.

Jon

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Nicely put.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

The electron beam tester project that I worked on from 1988 to 1991 grew out of a joke proposal that I wrote to send up my boss's pretty much irrational requirement that our timing system had to offer 10psec quantisation in placing a 500psec wide sampling pulse.

I had a Gigabit Logic databook on my shelf at the time, so I sketched a proposal around the 10G061 4-bit synchronous counter, which could be used to make an arbitrary width counter clocking at 800MHz.

The price was extortinate, and the part was single-sourced, so I thought that I was sending the guy up. It turned out that the company wanted to build a machine that would be hard for the competition to emulate, so we built it and got it to work, but not fast enough to get it into the market.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

But is it really heridetary? Well, notwithstanding a certain amount of natural selection in the equation. But yes, I aqree that caring parents raise caring children, and negligent people raise negligent children.

But I argue that that's learned behavior, and there's more than DNA that's passed on to the next generation.

After all, people are just DNA's way of making more DNA. >:->

Thanks, Rich

Free Will:

Good Luck! Rich

Try it! You might like it! Or, you might not. That's the nature of Free Will - to discern the difference between pain and Love.

Cheers! Rich

Absolutely nothing. Feelings are the way the Divine Will expresses through you, the same way that thoughts are the way that the Divine Spirit expresses through you.

What needs to be done is to find the balance point, where Spirit and Will create Life and Love, but without denial and judgement.

If anyone would actually _READ_

they might be profoundly surprised at how simple, yet profound the answer is.

And I'm not against science - after all, isn't Science the quest for Truth?

And, as an amateur metaphycist, I'm investigating and found that these hypotheses answer questions like, "if there is a God who has any power, then why are things the way they are on Earth?"

If I'm proved wrong, then I'll learn the hard way, which people seem to continue to insist on doing, but they never seem to learn.

Or either, by the time they _do_ learn, it's too late, because they're dead.

Thanks, Rich

Yes, perfection is nothing but a mad obsession. Life is _xupposed_ to be "chaotic". To the strait-laced, who have their prejudgemental ducks all in a row, Freedom _looks_ very much like Chaos. In fact, Freedom _feels_ much better than Chaos.

Cheers! Rich