Is DNA the TOTAL Instruction Set for a Lifeform?

Correct me if I am wrong but I remember the original declaration being that it was the position of the Hox genes in the genome that was associated with changes of very basic proportions of shape like spine to limb length. There was no mention of differences in the content of the gene and hence no difference in the protein that it coded. And no causality was proven, only association.

Like nearly everything you've said in this thread, this is nonsense. Hox genes were never so declared and this was never representative scientific thought on the subject. It's just more of your pseudoscientific make-believe.

I would be most appreciative of references relating to your case if I am misinformed on this matter and promise to regard any information that you provide in an objective and open-minded way, even changing and expanding my understanding.

At the level of biological knowledge you evince - none at all, basically - you could do worse than start with the Wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hox_gene

The third, evidence based element of phantom limb syndrome is numerous cases of continuing perception where the limb was. Patients are still able to tell when 'the limb is touched' and it depends on 'the position of the limb'.

Sorry, no. There are no medical cases where any amputee has been able to sense actual contact with an amputated limb. The "continued perception" is solely an artifact of the persistent motorneural activity in the brain corresponding with the motor control of the amputated limb. Electromagnetic fields have not ever been involved and there's no "evidence-based element" in that regard.

In the words of the consultant anaesthesiologist who first told me of this 'We don't talk about this because it brings the anatomical chemical model into serious doubt.'

Since there's no such thing as the "anatomical chemical model" aside from your own invention, I highly doubt that any person actually said these words to you. Just one more thing you're making up, most likely.

The electromagnetic field was empirically measured in both cases. It was found that the lizard was capable of maintaining this Em field during the time of growth and that the cells literally grew into it.

No, it was not. This is make-believe, not something that really happened. And it's not how regeneration happens in lizards.

It is still passed from consultant to junior doctor in the oral tradition of medicine, at least in the UK.

"Oral tradition"? Surely you must be joking. Some senior doctor is having a laugh at your expense, or else somebody has tried to sell you something.

The idea that a grown, adult person would take seriously scientific claims passed down by "oral tradition" is, perhaps, the funniest thing I've read all week. Thanks for providing a laugh, if not anything else of any merit.

Wherever it has been possible to remedy the problems that a protein abnormality causes, the organism becomes normal without any change taking place to the gene itself. Hence, there is no causality for the characteristic being coded into the gene but a consequence of the protein abnormailty preventing normality from being expressed.

Completely wrong. Genes determine the primary sequence of proteins, which determines their structure. Structure of proteins determines functions. The fact that you can frequently supplement the body with "correct" proteins to overcome a genetic disease doesn't eliminate as causal the body's own defective genes. In fact it proves that genetic diseases are, in fact, caused by genes that encode mal-formed proteins.

This is not New Age hippy pseudo-science.

That's what con artists say when they are selling hippy pseudoscience.

The electromagnetic field was empirically measured in both cases.

Peer reviewed publications please.

To explain the normal variance of the population through the complex interactions of multiple genes is only a hypothesis and we should remember that there are subjective gains in accepting the hypothesis as a part of a web of theories that prove Eugenics, the materialist world view, the monopoly of the chemical anatomical model of health and the need to fund the HGP

It isn't a hypothesis. It is an observation. Change the genes, change the development. That is the observation.

I would suggest firstly that you have a look at the history of science if you believe that evidence can disappear from the mainstream only to be rediscovered later. It has happeneed from Copernicus to String Theory and of course including Mendel's work. During that time it is generally only carried in the oral tradition only to be rediscovered, their full importance realised and become mainstream.

You obviously have great faith in shape being encoded in chromosomal DNA. I am unsure how you jump from Hox genes being important in the embyological ordering of segments, which is pretty much what I said, to such details of shape as inheriting the recognisable facial features of your parents.

The whole argument of all inheritance being in chromosomal DNA started with an overgeneralisation that became an assumption and that tendency appears to be continuing.

About the best I can find on the internet about the importance of electrical signals in cell differentiation and growth, which obviously only includes recent data thinking in this expanding subject is to be found at http://jcs.biologists.org/content/122/23/4267.full.pdf

Although my boss might have added his own touches to what was known and expanded his interpretations, this was not some elaborate hoax on his part. It came up on account of his having a patient who demonstrated this phenomena. I saw it with my own eyes.

This is not New Age hippy pseudo-science.

This is, in fact, New Age hippy pseudo-science.

The research was conducted between the wars as a result of that wondeerful human invention the landmine. The medical profession was presented with a concerning number of amputations for which they obviously sought a cure. One question was why a limb could grow the first time but was unable to regrow a second time. The second question was that some species, most notably certain lizards, are able to regrow a limb, a tail, which requires the ability of cells to be directed into differentiating into the correct cell types in the correct places. The electromagnetic field was empirically measured in both cases. It was found that the lizard was capable of maintaining this Em field during the time of growth and that the cells literally grew into it. Unfortunately in terms of a human amputation, the field collapsed before significant growth had occurred. Causality was proven by placing an disruptive electromagnetic field into the cage of the lizard. There was no regrowth.

Could we have some references, please?

The achondroplasia gene does not 'create' the original template. The template adapts to it as it does to any fact which impedes its being 'filled'. The effect of the inability of the long bones to grow is akin to that of external factors changing the ability of the body to fulfill that shape, such as malnutrition, the Japanese banding girls feet, African tribes that use metal rings to elongate the neck or banding the head to make it grow pointed before the growth plates close. This can be seen more clearly in congenital short stature caused by a failure of growth hormone, so called Peter Pan Dwarfism. The short stature or shape is not congenitally coded into the defective gene. Growth hormone suppliments allow the body to assume its predestined shape. Similarly the PKU gene does not code for organic brain damage but the protein error that causes that organic brain damage is. Wherever it has been possible to remedy the problems that a protein abnormality causes, the organism becomes normal without any change taking place to the gene itself. Hence, there is no causality for the characteristic being coded into the gene but a consequence of the protein abnormailty preventing normality from being expressed.

That was an unnecessarily long and obscure answer to what was after all a yes or no question.

Does the dwarf gene determine the dwarfish shape of the "electromagnetic template"? Yes or no?

You obviously have great faith in shape being encoded in chromosomal DNA.

Actually, I have evidence so no faith is required. The work in fruit flies has shown that changing HOX genes changes shape.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeobox

So where are the peer reviewed scientific publications backing your assertions?

I am unsure how you jump from Hox genes being important in the embyological ordering of segments, which is pretty much what I said, to such details of shape as inheriting the recognisable facial features of your parents.

Because development is development. Hox genes are the engines of development, and it is this process that produces your facial features. Why do you think identical twins, which are genetic clones, look so much alike?

About the best I can find on the internet about the importance of electrical signals in cell differentiation and growth, which obviously only includes recent data thinking in this expanding subject is to be found at http://jcs.biologists.org/content/122/23/4267.full.pdf

Did you forget that it is genes that control the responses to these electrical cues, and that it is genes that control the production of these electrical cues?

I would suggest firstly that you have a look at the history of science if you believe that evidence can disappear from the mainstream only to be rediscovered later. It has happeneed from Copernicus to String Theory and of course including Mendel's work. During that time it is generally only carried in the oral tradition ....

... with the exception of all three of your examples, of course.

Change the genes, change the development?

I think that I have adequately proved that in similar cases, a simple correction of the protein abnormality leads to normal development and shape. Development and shape are normal in the presence of the abnormal gene. QED, in these cases, the gene does not code for shape. It is a consequence of the protein that the gene creates.

There is no reason to believe that achondroplasia is an exception to this general pattern.

And rather than mudslinging to defend the assumption that all inheritance is in chromosomal DNA, would anybody like to define and justify 'scientifically' how intelligence, inherited animal behaviour or species specific markings are coded and inherited in chromosomal DNA?

A century after Copernicus published the evidence for the earth only 10 academics beleived it (Encarta)

Mendel's work was rediscovered forty years after having been published in an obscure journal of plant hybridization

The modern basis of M-Theory failed peer review and did not resurface for 10 year 8The Elegant Universse, Michael Greene)

Change the genes, change the development? I think that I have adequately proved that in similar cases, a simple correction of the protein abnormality leads to normal development and shape. Development and shape are normal in the presence of the abnormal gene. QED, in these cases, the gene does not code for shape. It is a consequence of the protein that the gene creates.

* facepalm *

A century after Copernicus published the evidence for the earth only 10 academics beleived it (Encarta) Mendel's work was rediscovered forty years after having been published in an obscure journal of plant hybridization The modern basis of M-Theory failed peer review and did not resurface for 10 year 8The Elegant Universse, Michael Greene)

What has this to do with your nonsense about the "oral tradition"?

I would suggest firstly that you have a look at the history of science if you believe that evidence can disappear from the mainstream only to be rediscovered later.

You seem to be making two claims at once - the first, that there's all this unknown evidence for electromorphological fields that is completely lost to science; and two, that all this "lost" evidence isn't lost at all because you know all about it (but can't provide any of it.) Which is it?

It has happeneed from Copernicus to String Theory and of course including Mendel's work.

Well, but as you've just shown none of these are actually examples of "lost" scientific evidence surviving by oral tradition. Mendel's work survived in print, not by being passed down by oral tradition. Copernicus's work De revolutionibus orbium coelestium survives in manuscript form to this day. String theory has always been in print.

Something is an "oral tradition" when it is passed verbally, in spoken form, between generational individuals (usually without being written down except, perhaps, towards the end.) In absolutely none of the three cases you've put forth was there an "oral tradition" of anything.

I am unsure how you jump from Hox genes being important in the embyological ordering of segments, which is pretty much what I said, to such details of shape as inheriting the recognisable facial features of your parents.

The evidence that it is true is what causes me to make that leap. "Faith" has nothing to do with it, but faith is what is required to believe in electromorphological fields on no other basis but that a senior doctor told you they existed.

It came up on account of his having a patient who demonstrated this phenomena.

There was no patient who demonstrated this "phenomena", was there?

Did you forget that it is genes that control the responses to these electrical cues, and that it is genes that control the production of these electrical cues?

And the electrical cues control the genes too....

And the two interact.

Evolution is complex. It appears to be multilayered and the genetics of DNA plays an incredibly important part in that. However, it is not everything in inheritance, except 99% of our research into inheritance.

The old moral of 'if we do not research it, it does not exist' is inappropriate. Research needs to expand to include other possibilities and earlier in the thread I have suggested other extra-nuclear processes and the nuclear proteins should also be investigated. This requires an open mind rather than one closed by attempting to squeeze every characteristic into DNA.

Various arguments are unsure, especially in the context of the limited storage capacity of DNA and the lack of hard mechanism for many characteristics. The detailed shape is one of them and generalising the action of Hox genes from the grossest features early embryology carries no certainty at all. It is not proven and it is open for debate. The same is true of most if not all forms of inheritance of the normal variation of characteristics.

Many of the arguments do not make sense. I have mentioned in this thread that both chromosomal proteins and other cellular mechanisms may be involved. Arguments about identical twins looking alike have not been thought through in that context. They do not only share DNA but every other part of the egg.

And I have presented the electromagnetic template as a mystery that needs to be solved. Something similar may well form another level of understanding that interacts with DNA and environment in life, rather than in the laboratory.

So you do not think that any of the people involved talked about these theories whilst they were being ignored by the mainstream?

Did you forget that it is genes that control the responses to these electrical cues, and that it is genes that control the production of these electrical cues?

Can he "forget" what has never, ever been seriously proposed or demonstrated?

Again, the notion that "genes control electrical cues" is nonsense. You've just made it up.

And I have presented the electromagnetic template as a mystery that needs to be solved.

And observe as I solve it with ease: there's no such thing as an "electromagnetic template." You're a crank. Mystery solved!