A new theory (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, May 20, 2013, 14:46 (4013 days ago)

From Professor Denis Noble of Oxford. So much for another Oxford Professor, Richard Dawkins. This says the gene is no longer the only central control, and the paper quotes James Shapiro among others. I predict this type of thought and opinion will appear more and more. -"We are privileged to live at a time of a major change in the conceptual foundations of biology. That change is set to bring the physiological study of function right back into centre stage. It is worth quoting the relevant paragraph from Mattick's commentary on the Nelson et al work: "The available evidence not only suggests an intimate interplay between genetic and epigenetic inheritance, but also that this interplay may involve communication between
the soma and the germline. This idea contravenes the so-called Weismann barrier,
sometimes referred to as Biology's Second Law, which is based on flimsy evidence and a desire to distance Darwinian evolution from Lamarckian nheritance at the time of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis. However, the belief that the soma and germline do not communicate is patently incorrect."
The only parts of this statement that I would change are, first, to remind readers, as I noted earlier in this article, that Darwin himself did not exclude the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Second, to remind us that Lamarck himself did not invent 'Lamarckism' (Noble 2010). As we move on beyond
the unnecessary restrictions of the Modern Synthesis we move back towards a more genuinely 'Darwinian' viewpoint, and we also move towards a long-overdue rehabilitation of Lamarck. Of course, neither Darwinism nor Lamarckism remains unchanged. Neither could have anticipated the work of the 21st century. But we can now see the Modern Synthesis as too restrictive and that it dominated biological science for far too long. Perhaps the elegant mathematics and the extraordinary reputation of thereputation of the scientists involved blinded us to what now seems obvious: the organism should never have been relegated to the role of mere carrier of its genes." (my bold)
http://ep.physoc.org/content/early/2013/04/12/expphysiol.2012.071134.full.pdf+html