Naked Science Forum
Life Sciences => Physiology & Medicine => Topic started by: thedoc on 14/04/2015 09:21:44
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Scientists have discovered that squid edit the messages read from their genes to a surprisingly large extent.
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Well, that is remarkable. To mind comes the phenomenon of monarch butterflies whose migration takes several insect lifetimes, raising the question: How do subsequent generations who have never seen where they came from, know how to get back home? The first thing that comes to mind is that they simply have been programmed by evolution to do so; but if that is so, then the species ought to be very inadaptable to changes that might occur in its environment, unless, of course, the butterflies really do not know where they are going, but simply go off in an assortment of directions, most dying out but those lucky enough to choose the right path complete the cycle. Such a hypotheses requires no knowledge, except the most rudimentary, to be conveyed from one generation to the next. But is it supported by evidence? If not, we are stuck with deciding how generations learn in some detail from preceding generations, or accepting that the species is incapable of any appreciable rate of adaptation to environmental changes. If the evidence demonstrates that the butterflies do in fact learn in some detail and are also adaptable to changes that take place on a human time scale, then we would be forced to ask how this detailed knowledge is transmitted. That it might be transmitted via purposeful manipulation by a species of its own genes is a viable theory but also an astonishing concept. However, before exploring this question further, we need to know whether there is solid evidence that substantive intergenerational information transfer in fact occurs.