The HP Way

Darwin was a Lamarckian in the sense that he believed that the environment produced variation. Weismann produced his doctrine of the immutability of the genome, the "Weismann Barrier", in the late

John

Don't you just love it when the schmucks get caught ?:-)

Why not? It'd be a better world ;-)

...Jim Thompson

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Bumper sticker seen in Alaska:

"An armed society is a polite society".

It will once we design gene spinners.

Reducing the number of calories fed to mice extends their lives up to double. The same technique works on every animal tried, from protozoans to worms to spiders to guppies to mammals. Ongoing studies confirm the effect in primates, at least so far.

Calorie-restricted life span varies roughly inversely with calories fed, so that total lifetime calories seems to be about constant: rats fed half live twice as long, fed 2/3rds they live 3/2s as long, etc. Some have proposed there's a species-dependent lifetime 'calorie quota'; when you've used yours up, you're done.

An interesting aspect is the effect on cancer. Burning fewer calories produces less oxidative damage. As you noted, mice _normally_ die of cancer, as their repair mechanism isn't as good as ours. Cutting their calories, however, reduces *cancer*. Neat, eh?, and very likely true for people too. [1]

It seems that, like other internal combustion engines, your corporeal vessel can only contain a given quantity of that metabolic fire called 'life' before being consumed itself.

Best, James Arthur

~~~~~~~~~~~~ [1] For example,

============================================= Hey John... I just read that geneticists have discovered a way to tell a male chromosome from a female chromosome.... they pull down its genes! Thanks! Don't forget to tip the bartenders!

I seem to recall that the mammal engine's valve springs are good for, on average, about a billion cycles (heartbeats). Thanks to all our things (medicine, peaceful society, etc.) we average three billion heatbeats, or something like that.

Tim

"Homer J Simpson" skrev i en meddelelse news:pR%Lg.59$bf5.18@edtnps90...

Everywhere!

Random mutation and natural selection is not the whole story: Whole genes are frequently swapped too between cells are tranferred on virii. This increases the rate of "learning".

So entire structures could be exchanged between species. And with a little luck, a whole new creature could "evolve" in a single generation.

John

Perhaps you (and John) misunderstand what is meant by "random mutation". A "mutation" means simply that the next generation's DNA is not the same as its parent's, and "random" means "by chance". There are a number of mechanisms for producing these random mutations - for asexual organisms, the most common one is through random errors while copying the DNA as a cell splits, while for sexual organisms, the most important one is mixing up the genes from two parents (copy errors occur too, but play a smaller role). Other mechanisms, such as viral transfers, are minor effects (except for viruses) - but they too are "random mutations".

How can you know, even using your definition of "mutation", that mutations are always random? It certainly doesn't make sense that they should be.

John

What's the alternative? Planned mutations?

In message , dated Mon, 11 Sep 2006, John Larkin writes

There is no evidence that they are anything other. Occam's Razor. But if the proteome is shown to be able to cause changes in the DNA of germ cells, thus providing a path for 'inheritance of acquired characteristics', so be it. That doesn't change anything much; it's certainly not radical.

Things don't have to make sense, and what makes sense varies with the person sensing. For most people, quantum entanglement doesn't make sense, but for some, it does. It makes perfect sense that radiation, chemicals and copying errors can create random changes in DNA.

More sophisticated algorithms.

John

Then you need to develop a theory for recognizing these algorithsms, making quantitative predictions about them, and then checking existing data as well as suggesting possible places to investigate; for seeing if observed mutations (rates, specific locations and types, etc) can confirm the idea. Otherwise, it's religion.

Jon

Not bad as a hypothesis, but it will be nothing more than that, until someone finds evidence that supports it. "Should be" is often wrong.

In message , dated Mon, 11 Sep 2006, Jonathan Kirwan writes

It's prima facie bad science. It may be religion, but not necessary. Scientists can be deluded. It's a bit surprising that it took so long for 'falsifiability' to be defined and propagated by Karl Popper. One might have thought that it would have been conceived a century earlier.

No, it's the refusal to even consider higher levels of evolution that's the widespread religion.

John

Why aren't we still using crystal sets? They're simple.

That's only one of many plausible mechanisms, and many more implausible ones.

And it makes perfect sense that DNA should itself include redundancy and should encode repair mechanisms to cancel most or maybe even all of those random changes.

You don't redesign circuits boards by firing bullets at them. Well, I don't.

More generally - and this applies to electronic design - when someone declares, with little or no justification, that something is impossible, it's because they want it to be impossible. So, for them, it becomes impossible. I don't hire people who think this way.

John