Mendel wasn't entirely right

Hear hear! This story is actually quite a good example of how scientist respond to unexpected results. As New Scientist report: So, they discover something anomalous, methodically rule out the obvious explanations like contamination, and come to the realisation they've discovered something new and interesting.And the response of the rest of the scientific community? Pretty much the same as Mick's. Its a surprise, but it's a very interesting one. Clearly the Darwinian thought police have all taken an early Easter holiday...As an aside: although I can't claim to be an expert, this discovery seems to me to just add to the evidence that DNA is not (quite) the be all and end all of inheritance - haven't some people attributed our lack of success with cloning to the lack of transciption factors, etc. which would normally transmitted to the embryo?

You are probably thinking of epigenetic markers such as methylation of DNA, methylation and acetylation of histones and a number of other not strictly genetic factors thought to be important in the development of the early embryo and not neccessarily perfectly reset in SCNT.None of these are transcription factors, but you may be thinking of something completely different.TTFN,WK

What are you talking about? As I have stated several times Arabidopsis is widely used as a genetic model system. It is used time and again to investigate genetics in just such controlled experiments over several generations. If there was a 10% reversion in all cases then it would have bee noticed by now. Hell, if it was that frequent Mendel would have noticed it with his peas!! 10% may form a significant proportion of the population, but it will never be the majority of the population, all you seem to be suggesting is that the reversion maintains an effectively ancestrral wild type population, well duh, which is what the paper said in the first place. As pink pointed out you are completely ignoring the action of selection. If the mutation is neutral then it doesn't matter if the allele reverts, if it is deleterious then reversion will increase the chances of extinction of the allele, if it is beneficial then selection should counteract any effect from the revertant, although the revertant may supply a desirable source of potential biodiversity for future environmental changes. In a word, No. The authors only make the most tentative of suggestions. It is really far too early to expect any sort of detailed picture of the mechanism. I could speculate, but that is all it would be.TTFN,WK

Oh! So this is what it's all about is it?For the umpteenth time - scientific theories are tentative!!!. The theory of evolution, and our theories on genetics are not, and have never been "Set in stone", they have all been modified when new evidence presents itself. This is how the scientific method works.If you want an example of dogma - look no further than creationism.BTW I notice you've had a little cheeky attempt to sneak a topic in through the back door of questions and suggestions about how ID is dismissed as not being 'scientific'. If you want to put your money where your mouth is and think you can back up the claim that it does meet the critera for being a proper scientific theory then start a proper topic - I'm sure you will not be short of oppponents.

Perhaps the clue train missed your stop. Heheheh (again, light topic, just needling).What this whole event shows, if not proves, is that evolutionary theory is not dogmatic, that it is allowed to change overnight (well over a few months of study), and that nothing about it is set in stone.How do you come away from an article which is by evos, pulling at a string on the fabric of evo theory, saying this is an example of why evos must be less dogmatic.How about you surprise me with an article on creos becoming less dogmatic and resorting to approved scientific methods to prove a case?

---

holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Well unfortunately for creationism, this actually puts another feather in the cap of those supporting MN (methodological naturalism) as a basis for scientific investigation, by proving it is not overly exclusive and dogmatic.However, you are right that it does open the door for such discussions and I am of the opinion that is what EvC debates are essentially going to boil down to in the end.Do we continue with MN and the science humans have built up over the last 300 years, or do we return to the scientific methods (and results) of Western Civilization from the early Greeks to about the 1200-1400s?

---

holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Yes I am in DA mode right now. However I think you are underbilling actual points that can be made by the ID crowd.While evos certainly did research this and it does not in itself refute evolutionary theory, the fact is that this study was almost NOT funded because it appeared doubtful to NSF based on its rejection of the totality of mendelian mechanisms. I don't think this is in any of the links given, but I also started my own thread on this topic and had a link which gave the history in that.The IDist can easily point to this case and ask "If this is the result of funding one study which challenged a tenet of evolutionary theory, isn't this reason to take a chance on further "doubtful" projects which challeneg other tenets?"And I believe this will open the door to more Behe-sian claims of our having overlooked other mechanisms which control evolution. Remember he does not claim that evolution does not exist, only how it works. He could easily say this shows that we don't know enough to claim exactly what forms what we see. Maybe there is "intrinsic programming", which existed from when life was created. Agree 100%. Regardles of any other arguments which come out of this, I hope most people understand the intriguing implications this has for life in general (or at least that one plant). Personally I have found most creo work to betray an enormous lack of interest and imagination.

---

holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

This whole "Darwin vs. Mendel" business is strange. It bespeaks someone conceiving of scientific ideas as developed by a few Great Patriarchs. That's not how it works. In actuality scientific ideas are usually developed incrementally by a cast of thousands, and the Big Names more often than not are individuals who were in the right place at the right time to make a major synthesis.Actually, religions don't really work like that either, most relogious ideas and texts are the product of a cast of characters...of course, those of fundamentalist mindset don't want to admit this either...

I'll grant the analogy was not the best or brightest, but was meant strictly to highlight that one is a lonely number and in no way calls into question the "bigger picture"....better?

Thats rather an exaggeration my dear Holmes.In your rejected post (don't feel too bad, mine got rejected too) you say... This isn't Lamarckian. There are some arguable examples of mechanisms allowing the inheritance of acquired characteristics, but I don't think this could reasonably be classified as one.TTFN,WK

It's late, so what's it to ya? Heheheh. I should have said Lamarckian-like. I was trying to capture that it was not a true mendelian scheme and had elements of an entity "choosing" some characteristics over another in order to best fit an environment. Also, I was trying to be slightly hyperbolic anyway (to generate comments from both sides) so I wasn't as careful with my wording as I should have been.Two good catches... ya jerk. Oh wait, I argued for people to be more stringent. Good show good show!

---

holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Let me clarify my original post: Point one is scientific and technical. Point two is broad and philosophical. I'm running two main arguents here, each with a different style. I'm not quite sure you recognize the distinction in many of the posts I made. My problem is that the scientific/technical rebuttal to my second point is not establishing sufficient clash. It's getting overanalytical and missing the broader philosophical meaning of my point (second point, if the distinction is still not clear enough).

Many people on this forum have said evolution is a fact of life. I don't every remember learning any explanation to the theory of life in science class besides evolution. And even when ToE has been refined and/or changed over the years due to "tentative" aspects, it's still been evolution in one form or another. There certainly is some dogma attached to evolution. Sure, creationism has some religious dogma, but it is nowhere near the dogmatic position of evolution today scientifically speaking. And even if there is a "Christian right," that also means there must be an "atheist left." And this is simply off-topic. Leave these little cheeky attacks out of your analysis.

The idea here is that if this study proves true to a much larger scale for mutation in general, the effects could be enormous. The sample size of mutations in the real world, whether large or small, is the sample size that led to evolution under the time frame of 6 billion years (or whatever the number may be). Now if that sample size of mutations is corrected at a rate of 10% per generation, and one-third are good, one-third are neutral, and one-third are bad, then evolution is granted less good mutations which are necessary for evolution. Even with a 3.3% correction rate of good mutations per generation, this adds up over billions of years, meaning the possibility of a huge change in the evolutionary timeframe.

quote:

---

Originally posted by pink sasquatch:

3. Is it possible it "mutated" back to the original sequence?

​

Unlikely based on the paper (assuming you mean "randomly mutated"):
- The reversion frequency (10%) was much higher than random mutation would allow.
- Non-revertant random mutations did not appear in the sequenced alleles above expected background.
- Perhaps most importantly - the revertants always had the same exact polymorphisms that were present in their "grandparents'", but not "parents'", genome.

---

good point.
take note. in at least animals (i'm a zoo nut not a botanist) the germ cells to be used to make the various sex cells are formed while a specimen is still an embryo--quite early on at that. so. your children are really your parents' children. sort of. it's kind of complicated.