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<DIV>
<DIV>These are good guesses, Greg. Your suggestion that some of the
missing pattern of the gene-that-never-was in the mustard plant with a double
set of mutated genes could be in the cytosol is evocative.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Bear with me while I run a string of thought that even I find difficult to
believe. Eshel and Joel Isaacson feel there's validity to some strange
research on water, research indicating that water is capable to carry
"imprints" of influences as vague as thoughts and as the label on the
bottle. Cytosol is the water and water-soluble components of the cell, the
stuff that's left when you get rid of the cell membrane, the nucleus, the
organelles and the cytoskeleton. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>If it's true that water bears layer after layer of memory, layer after
layer of imprints from trace chemicals that have long since been removed and
other such things, then, indeed, the water itself could play a part in the
construction of a "proper", "whole" gene to replace the two mangled genes in the
mutated arabidopsis. I suspect that the reconstruction of a gene the
mutated aradidopsis never possessed isn't a serial process by any stretch of the
imagination. I suspect it's a very orchestral process in which numerous
influences inside of the cell and outside of the cell participate.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>A cell is constantly receiving information about what form it should take,
what specialization it should adopt, and what it should be doing at this precise
second from genes around it and, I supsect in a sense, from the entire plant
it's a part of--not to mention the signals an individual plant receives
from the plant community and from the eco-system that plant
community has carved out.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>As Jeff Hawkins points out in On Intelligence, this multi-level process of
signal transduction, this process of signal receiving and signal summing, isn't
static. It moves continuously, like music. And like the music of a
symphony, the message may be digested down to a simple sequence in each
receiver. One of those receivers is the genome. Another is
the segment of a genome called a gene.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Like Hawkins' neurons, the input coming to the genome includes delayed
feedback on its previous actions...and on the actions of previous generations of
plants. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>So take the mysterious and possibly non-existent ability of water to hold a
"memory". Add it to the smarts in roughly 300 million macromolecules of the cell
and in the grander pattern they form. Add all that in to a hierarchy of
contexts that extend shell by shell like an infinite onion, and you may have a
partial explanation for the counter-Mendelian ability of a mustard plant to
generate a gene it never possessed but one that its neighbors and its ancestors
have had for a long, long time. You may get the ability of the plant
to receive an almost infinite number of signals, sum them, and arrive at the
right conclusion for each bit of space and time. In this case the mustard
plant arrives at the right conclusion about what a corrected version of its
damaged hothead gene should be like.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>By the way, Pavel Kurakin suggests that a similar hierarchical summation of
the entire cosmos gets fed into the "decision" of a single quantum particle when
it "picks" which receptor device it should move to. Or at least Pavel
suggests this in the interpretation of his work I've been trying to smuggle into
a paper he and I are working on that compares the decision-making of quantum
particles to the decision-making of bees.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Howard</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>In a message dated 4/1/2005 8:55:19 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,
ursus@earthlink.net writes:</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid"><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000 size=2>
<DIV class=Section1>
<P class=MsoNormal><FONT face=Arial color=navy size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: navy; FONT-FAMILY: Arial">This fabulous bit of
science is very evocative.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><FONT face=Arial color=navy size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: navy; FONT-FAMILY: Arial"></SPAN></FONT> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal><FONT face=Arial color=navy size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: navy; FONT-FAMILY: Arial">My best guess is that
such “pattern memory”—while some of it could be stored in cytosol elements,
etc.,--is most likely stored in the vast unexplored territories of “junk”
DNA—perhaps in fragments of genes, pseudogenes, etc., with non-gene RNA
elements acting as controls, inhibitors, etc.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><FONT face=Arial color=navy size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: navy; FONT-FAMILY: Arial"></SPAN></FONT> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal><FONT face=Arial color=navy size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: navy; FONT-FAMILY: Arial">Could be wrong, but
this sort of reconstructive memory does seem essential to
life.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><FONT face=Arial color=navy size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: navy; FONT-FAMILY: Arial"></SPAN></FONT> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal><FONT face=Arial color=navy size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: navy; FONT-FAMILY: Arial">Best!</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><FONT face=Arial color=navy size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: navy; FONT-FAMILY: Arial"></SPAN></FONT> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal><FONT face=Arial color=navy size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: navy; FONT-FAMILY: Arial">Greg</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><FONT face=Arial color=navy size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: navy; FONT-FAMILY: Arial"></SPAN></FONT> </P>
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<P class=MsoNormal><B><FONT face=Tahoma size=2><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma">From:</SPAN></FONT></B><FONT face=Tahoma size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma">
HowlBloom@aol.com [mailto:HowlBloom@aol.com] <BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Sent:</SPAN></B> Thursday, March 31, 2005 7:31
PM<BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">To:</SPAN></B>
paleopsych@paleopsych.org; kurakin1970@yandex.ru; ursus@earthlink.net;
paul.werbos@verizon.net<BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Subject:</SPAN></B> Re: From Eshel--A Glitch in
Genetic-centrism</SPAN></FONT></P></DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt"></SPAN></FONT> </P>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal><FONT face=Arial color=black size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Arial">re:
</SPAN></FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal><IMG SRC="cid:X.MA1.1112499551@aol.com" height=47 alt="The New York Times" width=199 align=left u1:shapes="_x0000_s1026" DATASIZE="2614" ID="MA1.1112499551" ><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><A title="http://www.nytimes.com/adx/bin/adx_click.html?type=goto&page=www.nytimes.com/printer-friendly&pos=Position1&camp=foxsearch-emailtools09-nyt5&ad=pf_millions.gif&goto=http://www.foxsearchlight.com/millions/index_nyt.html " href="http://www.nytimes.com/adx/bin/adx_click.html?type=goto&page=www.nytimes.com/printer-friendly&pos=Position1&camp=foxsearch-emailtools09-nyt5&ad=pf_millions.gif&goto=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Efoxsearchlight%2Ecom%2Fmillions%2Findex%5Fnyt%2Ehtml%20" target=_blank><SPAN></A></FONT><A title="http://www.nytimes.com/adx/bin/adx_click.html?type=goto&page=www.nytimes.com/printer-friendly&pos=Position1&camp=foxsearch-emailtools09-nyt5&ad=pf_millions.gif&goto=http://www.foxsearchlight.com/millions/index_nyt.html " href="http://www.nytimes.com/adx/bin/adx_click.html?type=goto&page=www.nytimes.com/printer-friendly&pos=Position1&camp=foxsearch-emailtools09-nyt5&ad=pf_millions.gif&goto=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Efoxsearchlight%2Ecom%2Fmillions%2Findex%5Fnyt%2Ehtml%20" target=_blank><IMG SRC="cid:X.MA2.1112499551@aol.com" title="http://www.nytimes.com/adx/bin/adx_click.html?type=goto&page=www.nytimes.com/printer-friendly&pos=Position1&camp=foxsearch-emailtools09-nyt5&ad=pf_millions.gif&goto=http://www.foxsearchlight.com/millions/index_nyt.html " height=31 alt="http://www.nytimes.com/adx/bin/adx_click.html?type=goto&page=www.nytimes.com/printer-friendly&pos=Position1&camp=foxsearch-emailtools09-nyt5&ad=pf_millions.gif&goto=http://www.foxsearchlight.com/millions/index_nyt.html " width=200 align=left vspace=10 border=0 u1:shapes="_x0000_s1027" DATASIZE="1968" ID="MA2.1112499551" ></A><A title="http://www.nytimes.com/adx/bin/adx_click.html?type=goto&page=www.nytimes.com/printer-friendly&pos=Position1&camp=foxsearch-emailtools09-nyt5&ad=pf_millions.gif&goto=http://www.foxsearchlight.com/millions/index_nyt.html " href="http://www.nytimes.com/adx/bin/adx_click.html?type=goto&page=www.nytimes.com/printer-friendly&pos=Position1&camp=foxsearch-emailtools09-nyt5&ad=pf_millions.gif&goto=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Efoxsearchlight%2Ecom%2Fmillions%2Findex%5Fnyt%2Ehtml%20" target=_blank></A><BR clear=all></SPAN></P>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">A mechanism central to Jeff Hawkins' analysis of
the way brains work in his On Intelligence may provide a clue to the
manner in which plants with copies of a damaged gene from both their
father and their mother manage to "recover" or reconstruct something
they never had-- a flawless copy of the gene they've received only
in damaged form.</SPAN></FONT></P></DIV>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt"></SPAN></FONT> </P></DIV>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Hawkins brings up a neural network trick called
auto-associative memory. Here's his description of how it
works:</SPAN></FONT></P></DIV>
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<P class=MsoNormal><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt"></SPAN></FONT> </P></DIV>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt"> "Instead of only passing information
forward...auto-associative memories fed the output of each neuron back
into the input.... When a pattern of activity was imposed on the
artificial neurons, they formed a memory of this pattern. ...To
retrieve a pattern stored in such a memory, you must provide the
pattern you want to retrieve. ....The most important property is that
you don't have to have the entire pattern you want to retrieve in
order to retrieve it. You might have only part of the pattern,
or you might have a somewhat messed-up pattern. The
auto-associative memory can retrieve the correct pattern, as it was
originally stored, even though you start with a messy version of
it. It would be like going to the grocer with half eaten brown
bananas and getting whole green bananas in return. ...Second, unlike
mist neural networks, an auto-associative memory can be designed to
store sequences of patterns, or temporal patterns. This feature
is accomplished by adding time delay to the feedback. ...I might feed
in the first few notes of 'Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star' and the
memory returns the whole song. When presented with part of the
sequence, the memory can recall the rest." (Jeff Hawkins,
Sandra Blakeslee. On Intelligence. New York: Times Books,
2004: pp 46-47.)</SPAN></FONT></P></DIV>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt"></SPAN></FONT> </P></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Where would such auto-associative circuits exist
in a plant cell? Here are some wild
guesses:</SPAN></FONT></P></DIV>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt"></SPAN></FONT> </P></DIV>
<DIV>
<UL type=disc>
<LI class=MsoNormal><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">In the entire cell, including its membrane,
its cytoplasm, its organelles, its metabolic processes,
and its genome;</SPAN></FONT> </LI></UL></DIV>
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<LI class=MsoNormal><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt"></SPAN></FONT></LI></UL></DIV>
<DIV>
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<LI class=MsoNormal><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Or in the entire cell and its context within
the plant, including the sort of input and output it gets from the
cells around it, the signals that tell it where and want it is
supposed to be in the plant's development and ongoing
roles.</SPAN></FONT> </LI></UL></DIV>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Howard</SPAN></FONT></P></DIV>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt"></SPAN></FONT> </P></DIV>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">re:</SPAN></FONT></P></DIV>
<DIV>
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<HR align=left width="100%" SIZE=1>
</SPAN></FONT></DIV></DIV>
<H5><B><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS" size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Unicode MS'">New York
Times</SPAN></FONT></B></H5>
<H5><B><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS" size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Unicode MS'">March 23,
2005</SPAN></FONT></B></H5>
<H2><B><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS" size=5><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 18pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Unicode MS'">Startling
Scientists, Plant Fixes Its Flawed Gene</SPAN></FONT></B></H2>
<P class=MsoNormal><STRONG><B><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">By </SPAN></FONT></B></STRONG><STRONG><B><FONT face="Times New Roman"><A title="http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=NICHOLAS WADE&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=NICHOLAS WADE&inline=nyt-per" href="http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=NICHOLAS%20WADE&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=NICHOLAS%20WADE&inline=nyt-per"><FONT color=#000066 size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: #000066">NICHOLAS
WADE</SPAN></FONT></A></FONT></B></STRONG><STRONG><B><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">
</SPAN></FONT></B></STRONG><BR><BR><BR></P>
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<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><IMG SRC="cid:X.MA3.1112499551@aol.com" height=33 alt=I width=11 align=left u1:shapes="_x0000_s1028" DATASIZE="392" ID="MA3.1112499551" ><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS"><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Unicode MS'">n
a startling discovery, geneticists at Purdue University say they have
found plants that possess a corrected version of a defective gene
inherited from both their parents, as if some handy backup copy with the
right version had been made in the grandparents' generation or earlier.
</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Unicode MS'">The finding
implies that some organisms may contain a cryptic backup copy of their
genome that bypasses the usual mechanisms of heredity. If confirmed, it
would represent an unprecedented exception to the laws of inheritance
discovered by Gregor Mendel in the 19th century. Equally surprising, the
cryptic genome appears not to be made of DNA, the standard hereditary
material. </SPAN></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Unicode MS'">The discovery
also raises interesting biological questions - including whether it gets
in the way of evolution, which depends on mutations changing an organism
rather than being put right by a backup system.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Unicode MS'">"It looks like
a marvelous discovery," said Dr. Elliott Meyerowitz, a plant geneticist
at the California Institute of Technology. Dr. David Haig, an
evolutionary biologist at Harvard, described the finding as "a really
strange and unexpected result," which would be important if the
observation holds up and applies widely in nature. </SPAN></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Unicode MS'">The result,
reported online yesterday in the journal Nature by Dr. Robert E. Pruitt,
Dr. Susan J. Lolle and colleagues at Purdue, has been found in a single
species, the mustardlike plant called arabidopsis that is the standard
laboratory organism of plant geneticists. But there are hints that the
same mechanism may occur in people, according to a commentary by Dr.
Detlef Weigel of the Max-Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in
Tübingen, Germany. Dr. Weigel describes the Purdue work as "a
spectacular discovery."</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Unicode MS'">The finding
grew out of a research project started three years ago in which Dr.
Pruitt and Dr. Lolle were trying to understand the genes that control
the plant's outer skin, or cuticle. As part of the project, they were
studying plants with a mutated gene that made the plant's petals and
other floral organs clump together. Because each of the plant's two
copies of the gene were in mutated form, they had virtually no chance of
having normal offspring.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Unicode MS'">But up to 10
percent of the plants' offspring kept reverting to normal. Various rare
events can make this happen, but none involve altering the actual
sequence of DNA units in the gene. Yet when the researchers analyzed the
mutated gene, known as hothead, they found it had changed, with the
mutated DNA units being changed back to normal form.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Unicode MS'">"That was the
moment when it was a complete shock," Dr. Pruitt said.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Unicode MS'">A
mutated gene can be put right by various mechanisms that are already
known, but all require a correct copy of the gene to be available to
serve as the template. The Purdue team scanned the DNA of the entire
arabidopsis genome for a second, cryptic copy of the hothead gene but
could find none.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Unicode MS'">Dr. Pruitt and
his colleagues argue that a correct template must exist, but because it
is not in the form of DNA, it probably exists as RNA, DNA's close
chemical cousin. RNA performs many important roles in the cell, and is
the hereditary material of some viruses. But it is less stable than DNA,
and so has been regarded as unsuitable for preserving the genetic
information of higher organisms.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Unicode MS'">Dr. Pruitt said
he favored the idea that there is an RNA backup copy for the entire
genome, not just the hothead gene, and that it might be set in motion
when the plant was under stress, as is the case with those having
mutated hothead genes. </SPAN></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Unicode MS'">He
and other experts said it was possible that an entire RNA backup copy of
the genome could exist without being detected, especially since there
has been no reason until now to look for it.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Unicode MS'">Scientific
journals often take months or years to get comfortable with articles
presenting novel ideas. But Nature accepted the paper within six weeks
of receiving it. Dr. Christopher Surridge, a biology editor at Nature,
said the finding had been discussed at scientific conferences for quite
a while, with people saying it was impossible and proposing alternative
explanations. But the authors had checked all these out and disposed of
them, Dr. Surridge said. </SPAN></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Unicode MS'">As
for their proposal of a backup RNA genome, "that is very much a
hypothesis, and basically the least mad hypothesis for how this might be
working," Dr. Surridge said.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Unicode MS'">Dr. Haig, the
evolutionary biologist, said that the finding was fascinating but that
it was too early to try to interpret it. He noted that if there was a
cryptic template, it ought to be more resistant to mutation than the DNA
it helps correct. Yet it is hard to make this case for RNA, which
accumulates many more errors than DNA when it is copied by the
cell.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Unicode MS'">He
said that the mechanism, if confirmed, would be an unprecedented
exception to Mendel's laws of inheritance, since the DNA sequence itself
is changed. Imprinting, an odd feature of inheritance of which Dr. Haig
is a leading student, involves inherited changes to the way certain
genes are activated, not to the genes themselves.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Unicode MS'">The finding
poses a puzzle for evolutionary theory because it corrects mutations,
which evolution depends on as generators of novelty. Dr. Meyerowitz said
he did not see this posing any problem for evolution because it seems to
happen only rarely. "What keeps Darwinian evolution intact is that this
only happens when there is something wrong," Dr. Surridge
said.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS" size=3><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Unicode MS'">The finding
could undercut a leading theory of why sex is necessary. Some biologists
say sex is needed to discard the mutations, almost all of them bad, that
steadily accumulate on the genome. People inherit half of their genes
from each parent, which allows the half left on the cutting room floor
to carry away many bad mutations. Dr. Pruitt said the backup genome
could be particularly useful for self-fertilizing plants, as arabidopsis
is, since it could help avoid the adverse effects of inbreeding. It
might also operate in the curious organisms known as bdelloid rotifers
that are renowned for not having had sex for millions of years, an
abstinence that would be expected to seriously threaten their Darwinian
fitness.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="TEXT-ALIGN: center" align=center><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Dr. Pruitt
said it was not yet known if other organisms besides arabidopsis could
possess the backup system. Colleagues had been quite receptive to the
idea because "biologists have gotten used to the unexpected," he said,
referring to a spate of novel mechanisms that have recently come to
light, several involving RNA.</SPAN></FONT></P></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
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<P class=MsoNormal><FONT face=Arial color=black size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Arial">----------<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</SPAN></FONT></P></DIV></DIV></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10">----------<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></FONT></BODY></HTML>