Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Lamarck confirmed III
Lamarck is alive
It has been a good manner among scientists to deny the ideas of Lamarck. His basic idea was that any organism gathers during its life some information and stores that information and passes it down to the next generation. This idea was ridiculed by many: if some rabbit has learned to run fast, then, his offspring would have to have bigger legs and muscles for running, this was not observed and therefore it was maintained that this idea is wrong.
Well, this idea is not wrong at all, only the observable sign are sometimes much smaller, or they do not appear in the first or second generation of offspring but much later on.
The following quote is from Academy Events on Development, Epigenetics and the "Diabesity" Epidemic .
An obesity epidemic is underway in the US and many other developed countries, and is associated with an increasing prevalence of type 2 diabetes, dyslipidemia, and hypertension. It has long been presumed that genetic variation alone explains individual differences in obesity susceptibility. A complementary explanation is that individual susceptibility to obesity is determined not only by genes but also by environmental influences during development. Early environment can affect the developmental establishment of epigenetic gene regulation, providing a potential biologic mechanism for such 'metabolic imprinting' of obesity susceptibility.
As you can see there starts to be a number of scientists who do see the possibility and necessity of environmental influence upon epigenome and so modifying the gene expression.
In a simpler way with no knowledge of epigenetics Lamarck suggested the same. So Lamarck is alive again. Environment does contribute to the overall development and evolution of individual organisms as well as the evolutionary development of species.
If you want to know more about that just watch and search in the internet, you will find plenty of evidence for this Lamarckian idea, though there are still some individual who deny and ridicule this idea.
It has been a good manner among scientists to deny the ideas of Lamarck. His basic idea was that any organism gathers during its life some information and stores that information and passes it down to the next generation. This idea was ridiculed by many: if some rabbit has learned to run fast, then, his offspring would have to have bigger legs and muscles for running, this was not observed and therefore it was maintained that this idea is wrong.
Well, this idea is not wrong at all, only the observable sign are sometimes much smaller, or they do not appear in the first or second generation of offspring but much later on.
The following quote is from Academy Events on Development, Epigenetics and the "Diabesity" Epidemic .
An obesity epidemic is underway in the US and many other developed countries, and is associated with an increasing prevalence of type 2 diabetes, dyslipidemia, and hypertension. It has long been presumed that genetic variation alone explains individual differences in obesity susceptibility. A complementary explanation is that individual susceptibility to obesity is determined not only by genes but also by environmental influences during development. Early environment can affect the developmental establishment of epigenetic gene regulation, providing a potential biologic mechanism for such 'metabolic imprinting' of obesity susceptibility.
As you can see there starts to be a number of scientists who do see the possibility and necessity of environmental influence upon epigenome and so modifying the gene expression.
In a simpler way with no knowledge of epigenetics Lamarck suggested the same. So Lamarck is alive again. Environment does contribute to the overall development and evolution of individual organisms as well as the evolutionary development of species.
If you want to know more about that just watch and search in the internet, you will find plenty of evidence for this Lamarckian idea, though there are still some individual who deny and ridicule this idea.
# posted by Dalibor @ 3:54 AM 
