Evolution Research - Evomech Forum Posts

New research has provided evidence for 'environmental inheritance', a radical theory of transgenerational genetic adaptation proposed by Professor Marcus Pembrey of the Institute of Child Health, UCL in the mid 1990's

The latest evidence challenges accepted thinking on genetic inheritance, suggesting that historic events can contribute to some common modern illnesses.

The research, published by the Children of the 90s study based at the University of Bristol in collaboration with Umea University, Sweden, could have far-reaching implications for our understanding of modern health epidemics - such as obesity or cardiovascular disease.

Conventionally scientists believe that how we develop as adults depends on two factors - the genes (DNA) we inherit from our parents, and the environmental influences, such as diet, lifestyle, exposure to pollution from conception onwards.

Professor Marcus Pembrey, who is also head of Genetics at Children of the 90s, says that over the long term, the process of Darwinian evolution by random errors in DNA followed by natural selection ensures that the human race adapts to changes in our environment. But it takes very many generations.

Now there is evidence for another mechanism which no-one had considered... some of the father's own experiences in his childhood are captured in some way by his sperm, so affecting the genes that he bequeaths to his descendants.

Also see:

'Cardiovascular and diabetes mortality determined by nutrition'

John Latter / Jorolat

Model of an Internal Evolutionary Mechanism (based on an extension to homeostasis) linking Adaptive Mutations to the Baldwin Effect:
http://members.aol.com/jorolat/index.html

Evolution Research Blog:
http://evomech.blogspot.com/

technorati tags: research, theory, adaptation, marcus+pembrey, obesity, cardiovascular, disease, genes, dna, parents, diet, lifestyle, pollution, genetics, darwinian, evolution, natural+selection, environment, mechanism, sperm

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Permanent Link posted by John Latter @ 3:09 PM 0 comments

Gainesville, Florida: - Performance on the dance floor may notalways show it, but people are rarely born with two left feet. We havegenes that instruct our arms and legs to grow in the right places andpoint in the right directions. They also provide for the spaces betweenour fingers and toes and every other formative detail of our limbs.

Evolutionarilyspeaking, the genetic instructions used to construct and position ourlimbs were being perfected more than half a billion years ago infishes, not along the sides of the body where the fins that precededhuman arms and legs sprouted, but at the midline that runs along thebackbone and belly.

This midline - think of the dorsal, tail andanal fins of a fish - is where the genetic template to produce finsoriginated, about 100 million years before paired fins evolved andabout 200 million years before paired fins evolved into limbs,according to University of Florida genetics researchers. The findings,published online today in the journal Nature, also provide insight intothe evolutionary history of genes involved in human birth defects.[evolution, origin]

[The Nature paper is currently available here but the link won't work for long because it's an advance publication - email if you have any problems.]

technorati tags: florida, genes, limbs, fishes, fins, body, midline, template, nature, evolution, history, origin

John Latter / Jorolat

Model of an Internal Evolutionary Mechanism (based on an extension to homeostasis) linking Adaptive Mutations to the Baldwin Effect:
http://members.aol.com/jorolat/index.html

Evolution Research Blog:
http://evomech3.blogspot.com/

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Permanent Link posted by John Latter @ 4:20 PM 0 comments

--- In evomech@yahoogroups.com, "John Latter" <jorolat@...> wrote:
>
>
> --- In evomech@yahoogroups.com, "jorolat" jorolat@a... wrote:
> >
> > [Gould & Lewontin, Royal Society of London, '78]
> >
> > Abstract:
> >
> > "An adaptationist programme has dominated evolutionary thought in
> > england and the United States during the past forty years. It is
> > based on faith in the power of natural selection as an optimizing
> > agent. It proceeds by breaking an organism into unitary "traits" and
> > proposing an adaptive story for each considered separately. Trade-
> > offs among competing selective demands exert the only brake upon
> > perfection; nonoptimality is thereby rendered as a result of
> > adaptation as well. We criticize this approach and attempt to
> > reassert a competing notion (long popular in continental Europe) that
> > organisms must be analyzed as integrated wholes, with baupläne so
> > constrained by phyletic heritage, pathways of development, and
> > general architecture that the constraints themselves become more
> > interesting and more important in delimiting pathways of change than
> > the selective force that may mediate change when it occurs. We fault
> > the adaptationist programme for its failure to distinguish current
> > utility from reasons for origin (male tyrannosaurs may have used
> > their diminutive front legs to titillate female partners, but this
> > will not explain why they got so small); for its unwillingness to
> > consider alternatives to adaptive stories; for its reliance upon
> > plausibility alone as a criterion for accepting speculative tales;
> > and for its failure to consider adequately such competing themes as
> > random fixation of alleles, production of nonadaptive structures by
> > developmental correlation with selected features (allometry,
> > pleiotropy, material compensation, mechanically forced correlation),
> > the separability of adaptation and selection, multiple adaptive
> > peaks, and current utility as an epiphenomenon of nonadaptive
> > structures. We support Darwin's own pluralistic approach to
> > identifying the agents of evolutionary change."
> >
> > Full text at:
> >
> > http://www.aaas.org/spp/dser/evolution/science/spandrel.htm
> >
> > [Bookmarked]
> >
> > Jorolat
>
> Now available at:
>
> http://www.aaas.org/spp/dser/evolution/history/spandrel.shtml
>
> John
> -- Model of an Internal Evolutionary Mechanism (based on an extension to homeostasis) linking Adaptive Mutations to the Baldwin Effect:
> http://members.aol.com/jorolat/index.html Evolution: Where Darwin meets Lamarck? Discussion Forum:
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evomech/
>

Now available at:

http://www.aaas.org/spp/dser/03_Areas/evolution/perspectives/Gould_Lewontin_1979.shtml

Wish they would stop moving it! :)

John Latter / Jorolat

Please Note: If you are reading this in a Blog then replying directly to this message (as opposed to making a 'blog comment') requires membership of the 'Evolution: Where Darwin meets Lamarck?' Egroup at:
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technorati tags: gould, lewontin, spandrels, san+marco, paradigm

Permanent Link posted by John Latter @ 9:50 PM 0 comments