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<DIV><FONT size=2>This looks fascinating. I must find time to read it
(easier said than done).</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>D.</FONT></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=HowlBloom@aol.com
href="mailto:HowlBloom@aol.com">HowlBloom@aol.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=paleopsych@paleopsych.org
href="mailto:paleopsych@paleopsych.org">paleopsych@paleopsych.org</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Monday, November 22, 2004 6:41
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> [Paleopsych] is evolutionary
change stockpiled?</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>Greg Bear just sent me an amazing paper he delivered to the American
Philosophical Society. I've enclosed a copy below.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The paper points out that evolution appears to occur in short bursts
followed by long periods of stability. He points out that this is more
meaningful than at first it seems. Evolutionary changes, he says, are
apparently stored up but are kept from expressing themselves. Then, when
the right signal comes, they come out of hiding and change the organism in
which they've been hiding. They don't just change one organism.
They make that change in a massive crowd of organisms--and in crowds of
crowds. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>In one of my papers, The Xerox Effect (see <SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"><A
href="http://physicaplus.org.il/view_eng1.html">http://physicaplus.org.il/view_eng1.html</A>),
</SPAN>I've called the spontaneous and simultaneous precipitation of protons,
galaxies, and stars supersimultaneity and supersynchrony. In Greg's
view, this supersimultaneity and supersychrony also occurs in the evolution of
life.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>But how does it work? How do evolutionary changes stack up in
storage? Do they go through any sort of pretesting, any process of
natural selection, any tryouts in the obstacle course of the real world?
How do they do this if they're not expressed in bodyplans or bodychanges that
can be put through their paces to see if they work?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>And, as Greg asks, when this host of changes comes out of hiding in a
bunch of creatures simultaneously, what's the trigger that sets off the
explosion of change? Howard</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>ps the boldfaced sections and those in yellow are my ways of highlighting
material for myself. Ignore the bolding and yellowing.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoBodyText
style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; TEXT-INDENT: 0in; TEXT-ALIGN: center; mso-pagination: none"
align=center><FONT face="Courier New">WHEN GENES GO WALKABOUT</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText
style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; TEXT-INDENT: 0in; TEXT-ALIGN: center; mso-pagination: none"
align=center><FONT face="Courier New"> <o:p></o:p></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText
style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; TEXT-INDENT: 0in; TEXT-ALIGN: center; mso-pagination: none"
align=center><FONT face="Courier New">By Greg Bear</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText
style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; TEXT-INDENT: 0in; TEXT-ALIGN: center; mso-pagination: none"
align=center><FONT face="Courier New"> <o:p></o:p></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New"> <o:p></o:p></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">I’m pleased and honored to be asked to appear before the
American Philosophical Society, and especially in such august company.
Honored... and more than a little nervous! I am not, after all, a scientist,
but a writer of fiction--and not just of fiction, but of science fiction. That
means humility is not my strong suit. Science fiction writers like to be
provocative. That’s our role. What we write is far from authoritative, or
final, but science fiction works best when it stimulates debate.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">I am an interested amateur, an English major with no
degrees in science. And I am living proof that you don’t have to be a
scientist to enjoy deep exploration of science. So here we go--a personal
view.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">A revolution is under way in how we think about the biggest
issues in biology--genetics and evolution. The two are closely tied, and
viruses--long regarded solely as agents of disease--seem to play a major
role.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">For decades now, I’ve been skeptical about aspects of the
standard theory of evolution, the neo-Darwinian Modern Synthesis. But without
any useful alternative--and since I’m a writer, and not a scientist, and so my
credentials are suspect--I have pretty much kept out of the debate.
Nevertheless, I have lots of time to read--my writing gives me both the
responsibility and the freedom to do that, to research thoroughly and get my
facts straight. And over ten years ago, I began to realize that many
scientists were discovering key missing pieces of the evolutionary puzzle.
</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText
style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><B><SPAN
style="BACKGROUND: yellow; mso-highlight: yellow"><FONT
face="Courier New">Darwin had left open the problem of what initiated
variation in species. Later scientists had closed that door and locked it. It
was time to open the door again.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></B></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">Collecting facts from many sources--including papers and
texts by the excellent scientists speaking here today--I tried to assemble the
outline of a modern appendix to Darwin, using ideas derived from disciplines
not available in Darwin’s time: theories of networks, software design,
information transfer and knowledge, and social communication--lots of
communication. </FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">My primary inspiration and model was variation in bacteria.
<B>Bacteria initiate mutations in individuals and even in populations through
gene transfer, the swapping of DNA by plasmids and viruses.
<o:p></o:p></B></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New"><B>Another inspiration was the hypothesis of punctuated
equilibrium, popularized by Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge. In the
fossil record--and for that matter, in everyday life--what is commonly
observed are long periods of evolutionary stability, or equilibrium,
punctuated by sudden change over a short span of time</B>, at least
geologically speaking--ten thousand years or less. <B>And the changes seem to
occur across populations.</B><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">Gradualism--the slow and steady accumulation of defining
mutations, a cornerstone of the modern synthesis--does not easily accommodate
long periods of apparent stability, much less<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>rapid change in entire populations.
<B>If punctuated equilibrium is a real phenomenon, then it means that
evolutionary change can be put on hold. How is that done? How is the alleged
steady flow of mutation somehow delayed, only to be released all at once?</B>
</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New"><B>I was fascinated by the possibility that potential
evolutionary change could be stored up. Where would it be kept?</B> <B>Is
there a kind of genetic library where hypothetical change is processed,
waiting for the right moment to be expressed? Does this imply not only
storage, but a kind of sorting</B>, a critical editing function within our
DNA, perhaps based on some unknown genetic syntax and morphology? </FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">If so, then <B>what triggers the change?</B> </FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">Most often, <B>it appears that the trigger is either
environmental challenge or opportunity.</B> Niches go away, new niches open
up. Food and energy becomes scarce. New sources of food and energy become
available. Lacking challenge or change, evolution tends to go to
sleep--perhaps to dream, and sometimes to rumple the covers, but not to get
out of bed and go for coffee.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">Because bacteria live through many generations in a very
short period of time, their periods of apparent stability are not millennia,
but years or months or even days.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">The most familiar mutational phenomenon in
bacteria--resistance to antibiotics--can happen pretty quickly. <B>Bacteria
frequently exchange plasmids that carry genes that counteract the effects of
antibiotics.</B> Bacteria can also absorb and incorporate raw fragments of DNA
and RNA, not packaged in nice little chromosomes. The members of the
population not only sample the environment, but exchange formulas, much as our
grandmothers might swap recipes for soup and bread and cookies. How these
recipes initially evolve can in many instances be attributed to random
mutation--or to the fortuitous churning of gene fragments--acting through the
filter of natural selection.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN><B>Bacteria</B> do roll the dice, but recent research indicates that
they <B>roll the dice more often when they’re under stress</B>--that is, when
mutations will be advantageous. <B>Interestingly, they also appear to roll the
dice predominantly in those genetic regions where mutation will do them the
most good!</B> Bacteria, it seems, have learned how to change more
efficiently.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">Once these bacterial capabilities evolve, they spread
rapidly. However, they spread only when a need arises--again, natural
selection. No advantage, no proliferation. <B>No challenge, no
change.</B></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">But gene swapping is crucial. And it appears that
<B>bacteria accept these recipes not just through random action, but through a
complicated process of decision-making.</B> Bacterial populations are learning
and sharing. In short, bacteria are capable of metaevolution--self-directed
change in response to environmental challenges. </FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">Because of extensive gene transfer, establishing a strict
evolutionary tree of bacterial types has become difficult, though likely not
impossible. We’re just going to have to be clever, like detectives solving
crimes in a town where everyone is a thief. </FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New"><B>Perhaps the most intriguing method of gene swapping in
bacteria is the <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">bacteriophage</I>, or
bacterial virus.</B> Bacteriophages--<B>phages for short</B>--can either kill
large numbers of host bacteria, reproducing rapidly, or lie dormant in the
bacterial chromosome until the time is right for expression and release. Lytic
phages almost invariably kill their hosts. But these latter types--known as
lysogenic phages--can actually transport useful genes between hosts, and not
just randomly, but in a targeted fashion. In fact, bacterial pathogens
frequently rely on lysogenic phages to spread toxin genes throughout a
population. Cholera populations become pathogenic in this fashion. <B>In
outbreaks of <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">E. coli</I> that cause
illness in humans, lysogenic phages have transported genes from shigella--a
related bacterial type--conferring the ability to produce shiga toxin, a
potent poison.</B> </FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">Thus, what at first glance looks like a disease--<B>viral
infection--is</B> also an essential method of communication--<B>FedEx for
genes.</B></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">When genes go walkabout, bacteria can adapt quickly to new
opportunities. In the case of bacterial pathogens, they can rapidly exploit a
potential marketplace of naïve hosts. In a way, decisions are made, quorums
are reached, genes are swapped, and behaviors change.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">What lies behind the transfer of bacterial genes? Again,
environmental challenges and opportunities. While some gene exchange may be
random, bacterial populations overall appear to practice functions similar to
education, regimentation, and even the execution of uncooperative members.
<B>When forming bacterial colonies, many bacteria--often of different
types--group together and exchange genes and chemical signals to produce an
organized response to environmental change. Often this response is the
creation of a <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">biofilm,</I> a slimy
polysaccharide construct complete with structured habitats, fluid pathways,
and barriers that discourage predators.</B> Biofilms can even provide added
protection against antibiotics. <B>Bacteria that do not go along with this
regimen can be forced to die</B>--either by being compelled to commit suicide
or by being subjected to other destructive measures. If you don’t get with the
picture, you break down and become nutrients for those bacterial brothers who
do, <B>thus focusing and strengthening the colony.</B></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">A number of bacteriologists have embraced the notion that
bacteria can behave like multicellular organisms. Bacteria cooperate for
mutual advantage. Today, in the dentist’s office, what used to be called
plaque is now commonly referred to as a biofilm. They’re the same
thing--bacterial cities built on your teeth.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">In 1996, I proposed to my publishers a novel about the
coming changes in biology and evolutionary theory. The novel would describe an
evolutionary event happening in real-time--the formation of a new sub-species
of human being. What I needed, I thought, was some analog to what happens in
bacteria. And so I would have to invent ancient viruses lying dormant in our
genome, suddenly reactivated to ferry genes and genetic instructions between
humans. </FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">To my surprise, I quickly discovered I did not have to
invent anything. <B>Human endogenous retroviruses are real, and many of them
have been in our DNA for tens of millions of years.</B> Even more interesting,
some have a close relationship to the virus that causes AIDS, HIV. </FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">The acronym HERV--human endogenous retrovirus--became my
mantra. In 1997 and 1998, I searched the literature (and the internet) for
more articles about these ancient curiosities--and located a few pieces here
and there, occasional mention in monographs, longer discussions in a few very
specialized texts. I was especially appreciative of the treatment afforded to
HERV in the Cold Spring Harbor text <I
style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Retroviruses,</I> edited by Drs. Coffin,
Varmus, and Hughes. But to my surprise, the sources were few, and there was no
information about HERV targeted to the general layman.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">As a fiction writer, however, I was in heaven--<B>ancient
viruses in our genes! And hardly anyone had heard of them.</B> </FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">If I had had any sense, I would have used that for what it
seemed at face value--a ticking time bomb waiting to go off and destroy us
all. But I had different ideas. <B>I asked, what do HERV do <I
style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">for</I> us? Why do we allow them to stay
in our genome?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN><o:p></o:p></B></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">In fact, even in 1983, when I was preparing my novel <I
style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Blood Music</I>, I asked myself--what do
viruses do ­<I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">for</I> us? Why do we
allow them to infect us? I suspected they were part of a scheme involving
computational DNA, but could not fit them in...not just then. HIV was just
coming into the public consciousness, and retroviruses were still
controversial. </FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">I learned that <B>HERV express in significant numbers in
pregnant women, producing defective viral particles apparently incapable of
passing to another human host.</B> So what were they--useless hangers-on?
Genetic garbage? Instinctively, I could not believe that. I’ve always been
skeptical of the idea of junk DNA, and certainly skeptical of the idea that
the non-coding portions of DNA are deserts of slovenly and selfish disuse.
</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">HERV seemed to be something weird, something wonderful and
counter-intuitive--and they were somehow connected with HIV, a
species-crossing retrovirus that had become one of the major health scourges
on the planet. I couldn’t understand the lack of papers and other source
material on HERV. Why weren’t they being investigated by every living
biologist?</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">In my rapidly growing novel, I wrote of Kaye Lang, a
scientist who charts the possible emergence of an HERV capable of producing
virions--particles that can infect other humans. To her shock, the HERV she
studies is connected by investigators at the CDC with a startling new
phenomenon, the apparent mutation and death of infants.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The infectious HERV is named SHEVA.
But SHEVA turns out to be far more than a disease. It’s a signal prompting the
expression of a new phenotype, a fresh take on humanity--a signal on Darwin’s
Radio.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">In 1999, the novel was published. To my gratified surprise,
it was reviewed in <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Nature</I> and other
science journals. Within a very few months, news items about HERV became far
more common. New scientific papers reported that <B>ERV-related genes could
help human embryos implant in the womb</B>--something that has recently been
given substantial credence. And on the web, I encountered the fascinating
papers of Dr. Luis P. Villarreal.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">I felt as if I had spotted a big wave early, and jumped on
board just in time. Still, we have not found any evidence of infectious
HERV--and there is certainly no proof that retroviruses do everything I accuse
them of in <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Darwin’s Radio</I>. But
after four years, the novel holds up fairly well. It’s not yet completely out
of date. </FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">And the parallel of HERV with lysogenic phages is still
startling.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">But back to the real world of evolution and
genetics.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">The picture we see now in genetics is complex. Variation
can occur in a number of ways. <B>DNA sequence is not fate</B>; far from it.
<B>The same sequence can yield many different products.</B> Complexes of genes
lie behind most discernible traits. Genes can be turned on and off at need.
Non-coding DNA is becoming extremely important to understanding how genes do
their work. </FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">As well, mutations are not reliable indicators of
irreversible change. In many instances, mutations are self-directed responses
to the environment. Changes can be reversed and then reenacted at a later
time--and even passed on as reversible traits to offspring.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New"><B>Even such neo-Darwinian no-nos as the multiple
reappearances of wings in stick insects points toward the existence of a
genetic syntax, a phylogenetic toolbox, rather than random mutation.</B> Wings
are in the design scheme, the bauplan. When insects need them, they can be
pulled from the toolbox and implemented once again.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">We certainly don’t have to throw out Mr. Darwin. Natural
selection stays intact. Random variation is not entirely excised. But <B>the
neo-Darwinian dogma of random mutation as a cause of all variation, without
exception, has been proven wrong.<o:p></o:p></B></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">Like genetics, evolution is not just one process, but a
collaboration of many processes and techniques. And evolution is not entirely
blind. Nor must evolution be directed by some outside and supernatural
intelligence to generate the diversity and complexity we see. Astonishing
creativity, we’re discovering, can be explained by wonderfully complicated
internal processes.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText
style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><B><FONT
face="Courier New">These newer views of evolution involve learning and
teamwork. Evolution is in large part about communication--comparing notes and
swapping recipes, as it were.<o:p></o:p></FONT></B></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">It appears that life has a creative memory, and knows when
and how to use it. </FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">Let’s take a look at what the scientists have discovered
thus far. </FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">Viruses can and do ferry useful genes between organisms.
<B>Viruses can also act as site-specific regulators of genetic expression.</B>
Within a cell, transposable elements--jumping genes similar in some respects
to endogenous retroviruses--can also be targeted to specific sites and can
regulate specific genes. <B><SPAN
style="BACKGROUND: yellow; mso-highlight: yellow">Both viruses and
transposable elements can be activated by stress-related chemistry, either in
their capacity as selfish pathogens--a stressed organism may be a weakened
organism--or as beneficial regulators of gene expression--a stressed organism
may need to change its nature and behavior. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></B></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">Viral transmission occurs not just laterally, from host to
host (often during sex), but vertically through inherited mobile elements and
endogenous retroviruses.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New"><B>Chemical signals between organisms can also change
genetic expression. As well, changes in the environment can lead to
modification of genetic expression in both the individual and in later
generations of offspring. These changes may be epigenetic--factors governing
which genes are to be expressed in an organism can be passed on from parent to
offspring</B>--but also genetic, in the sequence and character of
genes.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText
style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><B><FONT
face="Courier New">Our immune system functions as a kind of personal radar,
sampling the environment and providing information that allows us to adjust
our immune response--and possibly other functions, as
well.<o:p></o:p></FONT></B></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New"><B><SPAN
style="BACKGROUND: yellow; mso-highlight: yellow">These pathways and methods
of regulation and control point toward a massive natural network capable of
exchanging information--not just genes themselves, but how genes should be
expressed, and when.</SPAN></B> Each gene becomes a node in a genomic network
that solves problems on the cellular level. Cells talk to each other through
chemistry and gene transfer. And through sexual recombination, pheromonal
interaction, and viruses, multicellular organisms communicate with each other
and thus become nodes in a species-wide network.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">On the next level, through predation and parasitism, as
well as through cross-species exchange of genes, an ecosystem becomes a
network in its own right, an interlinking of species both cooperating and
competing, often at the same time.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">Neural networks from beehives to brains solve problems
through the exchange and the selective cancellation and modification of
signals. <B>Species and organisms in ecosystems live and die like signals in a
network. Death--the ax of natural selection--is itself a signal</B>, a
stop-code, if you will.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">Networks of signals exist in all of nature, from top to
bottom--from gene exchange to the kinds of written and verbal communication we
see at this event. Changes in genes can affect behavior. Sometimes even
speeches can affect behavior.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText
style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><B><FONT
face="Courier New">Evolution is all about competition and cooperation--and
communication. <o:p></o:p></FONT></B></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New"><B>Traditional theories of evolution emphasize the
competitive aspect and de-emphasize or ignore the cooperative aspect.</B> But
developments in genetics and molecular biology render this emphasis
implausible. </FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">Genes go walkabout far too often. We are just beginning to
understand the marvelous processes by which organisms vary and produce the
diversity of living nature.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">For now, evolution is a wonderful mystery, ripe for further
scientific exploration. The gates have been blown open once again. </FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">And as a science fiction writer, I’d like to make two
provocative and possibly ridiculous predictions.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">The first is that the more viruses may be found in an
organism and its genome, the more rapid will be that organism’s rate of
mutation and evolution.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">And the second: Bacteria are such wonderful, slimmed-down
organisms, lacking introns and all the persiflage of eukaryotic biology. It
seems to me that rather than bacteria being primitive, and that nucleated
cells evolved from them, the reverse could be true. <B>Bacteria may once have
occupied large, primitive eukaryotic cells, perhaps similar to those seen in
the fossil Vendobionts--or the xenophyophores seen on ocean bottoms today.
There, they evolved and swam within the relative safety of the membranous
sacs, providing various services, including respiration. They may have
eventually left these sacs and become both wandering minstrels and predators,
serving and/or attacking other sacs in the primitive seas.
<o:p></o:p></B></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText
style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><B><FONT
face="Courier New">Eventually, as these early eukaryotic cells advanced, and
perhaps as the result of a particularly vicious cycle of bacterial predation,
they shed nearly all their bacterial hangers-on in a protracted phase of
mutual separation, lasting hundreds of millions or even billions of years.
<o:p></o:p></FONT></B></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText
style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><B><FONT
face="Courier New">And what the now trim and super-efficient bacteria--the
sports cars of modern biology--left behind were the most slavish and servile
members of that former internal community: the
mitochondria.<o:p></o:p></FONT></B></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none"><FONT
face="Courier New">Which group will prove to have made the best decision, to
have taken the longest and most lasting road?</FONT></P></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 PTSIZE="10"
FAMILY="SANSSERIF">----------<BR>Howard Bloom<BR>Author of The Lucifer
Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global
Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st
Century<BR>Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York
University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate
Institute<BR>www.howardbloom.net<BR>www.bigbangtango.net<BR>Founder:
International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of
Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big
Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American
Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society,
Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society,
International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member:
Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series.<BR>For
information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see:
www.paleopsych.org<BR>for two chapters from <BR>The Lucifer Principle: A
Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see
www.howardbloom.net/lucifer<BR>For information on Global Brain: The Evolution
of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see
www.howardbloom.net<BR></FONT></DIV>
<P>
<HR>
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