Selfish genes (Introduction)

by David Turell @, Saturday, August 25, 2012, 18:43 (4451 days ago)

The genetic battle between a parasitic bacteria and the insects they live in:-http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444443504577601210055504248.html?KEYWORDS=Matt+Ridley-With cheers from Richard Dawkins

Selfish genes

by Balance_Maintained @, U.S.A., Sunday, August 26, 2012, 00:25 (4450 days ago) @ David Turell

So... a negative mutation becomes a positive mutation because that is the only way it fits with the current evolutionary paradigm. How predictable.

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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.

Selfish genes

by xeno6696 @, Sonoran Desert, Monday, August 27, 2012, 23:33 (4448 days ago) @ David Turell

The genetic battle between a parasitic bacteria and the insects they live in:
> 
> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444443504577601210055504248.html?KEYWORDS... 
> With cheers from Richard Dawkins-While I will agree that the "Selfish Gene" explains alot, it doesn't explain enough. -I'm about to grab E.O. Wilson's "The Social Conquest of Earth" and I've always found (the Other Wilson's social theories) to be right on the money in many cases. -And things get quite a bit more complicated when you throw our ability to reason into the mix...

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"

Selfish genes

by David Turell @, Tuesday, August 28, 2012, 13:08 (4448 days ago) @ xeno6696


> I'm about to grab E.O. Wilson's "The Social Conquest of Earth" and I've always found (the Other Wilson's social theories) to be right on the money in many cases. 
> 
> And things get quite a bit more complicated when you throw our ability to reason into the mix...-I don't buy the overwhelming instinct approach of Wilson to how humans work. Our consciousness makes us freer, but then we are not ants.

Selfish genes-book review

by David Turell @, Saturday, September 01, 2012, 18:00 (4444 days ago) @ David Turell

A late retrospective of Dawkins' famous work. Favorable, but the comments section is biting in many entries.-http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/aug/31/the-selfish-gene-richard-dawkins-review#start-of-comments-The whole thing is a giant metaphor that often gets lost in the criticism. Perhaps if the subtitle used the word metaphor, it might have helped. From my standpoint the shame is that Dawkins went on to use evolution as an excuse for atheism. Evolution can be viewed in theistic ways, just as reasonably as in the opposite way. -Is his view too simplistic, yes, but his intent probably was to awaken folks to the puzzle of evolution, as well as to promote his one-sided view of the theory. He has succeeded in becoming famous and controversal all at the same time. All to the good, for we all now arguing about Darwin and the validity of the theory. The theory was invented when cells were blobs of protoplasm. Now they are micro-factories, and cellular biochemical studies reveal a tortuously complex set of processes with check and balances, molecules that act as if they had minds of their own. It raises the question of where did the controlling information come from? Can a stochastic process create information? Can a code invent itself? Just tell me how, and I will join the materialists. May I hear some answers from anyone out there.

Selfish genes die! -book review

by David Turell @, Sunday, January 17, 2016, 02:03 (3211 days ago) @ David Turell

A new book says do away with selfish genes and think of genes as working together in a cooperative society!-https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22930561-000-the-society-of-genes-time-for-a-subtler-picture-of-evolution/-"FORTY years ago, Richard Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene popularised the notion that the gene, rather than the individual, was the true unit of evolution. That view has dominated evolutionary genetics ever since. But in The Society of Genes, biologists Itai Yanai and Martin Lercher say that it's time to replace the selfish-gene metaphor with a new one that focuses on relationships.
We are not the simple sum of our genes,” they write. “The members of the society of genes do not live in isolation. Working together, forming rivalries and partnerships, is the only way they can form a human body that can sustain them for a few decades and propel them into the next generation of humanity.”-"Their book is not a dry academic argument. Instead, Yanai and Lercher use the idea of a society of genes as a vantage point from which to reintroduce the entire field of evolutionary genetics. It is analogous to modern society, which is full of cooperative and competitive interactions. As in any industry, some genes are workers and builders, while others manage the operation as a whole. This helps us understand the complex genetic networks regulating metabolism and development, where many genes work together and each has multiple functions.-"The authors also hope this will give non-specialist readers a more secure grasp of the intricate and often surprising adaptations undergone by living organisms.-***-"The idea of genes working together is nothing new, of course. Four decades ago, Dawkins himself acknowledged that the selfishness of individual genes is tempered by their need to cooperate to keep their carrier organism alive and well. What Yanai and Lercher's metaphor shift does is revalue those networks of competition and cooperation. They are no longer afterthoughts: rather, they are the centrepiece of our understanding.-"Yanai and Lercher take care to assume no prior knowledge, explaining even elementary concepts such as the gene, natural selection and heredity. Readers meeting biology for the first time will be well served by this richer, more nuanced, way of viewing genetics, while those with a deeper background will find plenty of interest, notably in the vivid clarity of the explanations."-Comment: It's about timed!

Selfish genes die! -book review

by dhw, Sunday, January 17, 2016, 16:39 (3211 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: A new book says do away with selfish genes and think of genes as working together in a cooperative society!
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22930561-000-the-society-of-genes-time-for-a-sub...-QUOTE: "FORTY years ago, Richard Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene popularised the notion that the gene, rather than the individual, was the true unit of evolution. That view has dominated evolutionary genetics ever since. But in The Society of Genes, biologists Itai Yanai and Martin Lercher say that it's time to replace the selfish-gene metaphor with a new one that focuses on relationships.-We are not the simple sum of our genes,” they write. “The members of the society of genes do not live in isolation. Working together, forming rivalries and partnerships, is the only way they can form a human body that can sustain them for a few decades and propel them into the next generation of humanity.” (My bold)-Thank you for this, and three cheers for Lynn Margulis, who carried the flag for symbiosis and cooperation as a key to understanding evolution. She was also a champion of cellular intelligence.

Selfish genes die! -a nice review of Dawkins

by David Turell @, Saturday, January 30, 2016, 14:12 (3198 days ago) @ dhw

In Nature a review of Dawkins' books and ideas"-http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v529/n7587/full/529462a.html-"Books about science tend to fall into two categories: those that explain it to lay people in the hope of cultivating a wide readership, and those that try to persuade fellow scientists to support a new theory, usually with equations. Books that achieve both — changing science and reaching the public — are rare. Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859) was one. The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins is another. From the moment of its publication 40 years ago, it has been a sparkling best-seller and a scientific game-changer.-"The gene-centred view of evolution that Dawkins championed and crystallized is now central both to evolutionary theorizing and to lay commentaries on natural history such as wildlife documentaries. A bird or a bee risks its life and health to bring its offspring into the world not to help itself, and certainly not to help its species — the prevailing, lazy thinking of the 1960s, even among luminaries of evolution such as Julian Huxley and Konrad Lorenz — but (unconsciously) so that its genes go on. Genes that cause birds and bees to breed survive at the expense of other genes. No other explanation makes sense, although some insist that there are other ways to tell the story.-"What stood out was Dawkins's radical insistence that the digital information in a gene is effectively immortal and must be the primary unit of selection. No other unit shows such persistence — not chromosomes, not individuals, not groups and not species. These are ephemeral vehicles for genes, just as rowing boats are vehicles for the talents of rowers (his analogy).-"As an example of how the book changed science as well as explained it, a throwaway remark by Dawkins led to an entirely new theory in genomics. In the third chapter, he raised the then-new conundrum of excess DNA. It was dawning on molecular biologists that humans possessed 30-50 times more DNA than they needed for protein-coding genes; some species, such as lungfish, had even more. About the usefulness of this “apparently surplus DNA”, Dawkins wrote that “from the point of view of the selfish genes themselves there is no paradox. The true 'purpose' of DNA is to survive, no more and no less. The simplest way to explain the surplus DNA is to suppose that it is a parasite.”-***
"In the end, it was Michael Rodgers of Oxford University Press who enthusiastically published The Selfish Gene, after demanding “I must have that book!” when he saw early draft chapters. It was an immediate success, garnering more than 100 reviews, mostly positive. Dawkins went on to write books that were better in certain ways. The Extended Phenotype was more groundbreaking, The Blind Watchmaker more persuasive, Climbing Mount Improbable more logical, River out of Eden and Unweaving the Rainbow more lyrical, The Ancestor's Tale more encyclopaedic, The God Delusion more controversial. But they were all variations on the themes he so eloquently and adventurously set out in The Selfish Gene."-Comment: Most folks didn't recognize it as an analogy, and he went overboard in The God Delusion.

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