From: Brett Paatsch (paatschb@optusnet.com.au)
Date: Fri May 30 2003 - 21:58:23 MDT
Harvey Newstrom writes:
> Brett Paatsch wrote,
> > Matt Ridley author of the Red Queen has written a book Nature
> > via Nurture and in today's version of Time there's an interesting
> > "teaser" article. The science may be light but I liked it.
> >
> > http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101030602/story.html
> >
> > "Only now is it dawning on scientists .... that learning itself
> > consists of nothing more than switching genes on and off "
> > ......
>
> Meaning what?
That's what I wondered. The article is a teaser for a pop sci
book out next month. The above statement got my non-expert
attention and drew me in. I liked the article because appearing
in Time it seemed to be firing a timely suggestion at a non-scientific
readership that they are more than their genes, that genetics and
the environment interact in (to what to most folks) will still be
surprisingly ways. ie. We're more than our genes *and* we're
more than our environment. Its not nature vs nurture. Its nature
*and* nurture. Not thesis vs antithesis. Each of us is a new
synthesis dependent on both. Yet increasingly we are coming to
understand *how* the interrelationships between our genes and
our environments work. Good stuff in my view for diffusing
irrational fears re cloning and sneaking some science past the
guard of a wider public than might otherwise listen.
> That we can change our DNA by mental concentration?
> That our DNA changes throughout life as we learn? That
> learned data are encoded in DNA and passed along to our
> children as some racial memory?
(Aside: It seems to me that the popular fixation on DNA seems
to be wrong to me. Its DNA *interacting* with proteins which
do almost everything that matters in biology. DNA of itself is
almost completely uninteresting. The same DNA is in every cell
type. Yet what makes different cell types and this applies all the
way back to the fertilized egg which contains a cocktail of proteins
is the way the proteins interact with the DNA and selectively turn
certain genes off and on in turn creating other proteins in the mix
both in type and in number. If we knew all the proteins in the
maternal oocyte, both number and type, that would be powerful
knowledge indeed, because these early proteins are crucial to
early development and they do not come from the DNA of the
fertilized egg or new individual but from the mother. At this point
we don't know what these are).
The bit (above) on learning as switching genes on and off I found
intriguing but I don't have the quite enough science to square it
away easily. I'd be interested in Anders or someone elses take on
whether the following is oversimplified.
Article states "we know how the brain changes; by the real-time
expression of 17 genes, known as the CREB genes. They must
be switched on and off to alter connections among nerve cells in
the brain and thus lay down a new long-term memory. Memory
is in the genes in the sense that it uses genes, not in the sense that
you inherit memories."
> To say this is "light" on science is an understatement! This
> piece seems to simply restate the old nature-vs-nurture
> debate, misunderstanding half of it, and presenting it as if
> it were some strange, new discovery. I don't see any new
> biological information in this piece. This seems to be basic
> genetics and environment. However, some of the statements
> and conclusions seem off-the wall.
The article does do some restating of the old nature-vs-nurture
but I thought it did it as background context not as reaffirmation.
There probably isn't going to be much that is genuinely new
biological information in a piece like this (at least to those who
are getting their info from science journals or are pretty well read
and informed already, but even on a list such as this we vary in
the depths to which we understand certain subjects).
Where did you think the science got too light (perhaps to the
point of being dangerously misleading in some places) given
the target audience?
Which statements struck you as particularly off the wall?
- Brett Paatsch
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri May 30 2003 - 22:09:50 MDT