Natures wonders: making spider silk (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, August 21, 2014, 21:51 (3526 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: I simply don't understand why you insist on separating the genome from the cell. .... The whole point is that, if this hypothesis is correct, cells/cell communities are able to invent because they do have the equivalent of a brain (somewhere in the genome, if you like), which we are calling an inventive mechanism.-All I am saying is that individual cells cannnot act as you describe. But cell communities, as in whole animals can act to change phenotype, if an inventive mechanism is in the genome of that animal, as we have proposed. One would assume that the change is epigentic, not mutational in the Darwinian sense. This is what Shapiro seems to be driving at, although he has not dscribed such a mechanism as yet in his research.
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> dhw: I am relieved that you have now, at least for the time being, abandoned the hypotheses of preprogramming and dabbling in favour of what I have called the “intelligent cell”, although you still seem to dislike the term because you insist on separating the “brain” (inventive mechanism) from the “body” (the rest of the cell/cell community). -I'm not separating it. I'm defining it more closely than your nebulous theory. If there is an inventive mechanism, of course it is in the genome, and is part of the total organism. And somehow the organism decides to tap into its abilities for change.