Dangerous Darwin dogma (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, May 11, 2016, 02:10 (3117 days ago)

Try any approach slightly different than the party line, and solitary may be too easy for you:-http://www.nature.com/news/researcher-under-fire-for-new-yorker-epigenetics-article-1.19874-"A story about epigenetics in the 2 May issue of The New Yorker has been sharply criticized for inaccurately describing how genes are regulated. The article by Siddhartha Mukherjee — a physician, cancer researcher and award-winning author at Columbia University in New York — examines how environmental factors can change the activity of genes without altering the DNA sequence. Jerry Coyne, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Chicago in Illinois, posted two widely discussed blog posts calling the piece “superficial and misleading”, largely because it ignored key aspects of gene regulation. Other researchers quoted in the blog posts called the piece “horribly damaging” and “a truly painful read”. -***-"Mukherjee's article, ‘Same But Different', takes a personal view of epigenetics — a term whose definition is highly contentious in the field. The story features his mother and aunt, identical twins who have distinct personalities. Mukherjee ..writes that identical twins differ because: “Chance events — injuries, infections, infatuations; the haunting trill of that particular nocturne — impinge on one twin and not on the other. Genes are turned on and off in response to these events, as epigenetic marks are gradually layered above genes, etching the genome with its own scars, calluses, and freckles.”-***-"Their main criticism was that Mukherjee's article put too much emphasis on histone modification and DNA methylation, which they say are relatively minor contributors to gene regulation. They and other critics argued that Mukherjee ignored well-established mechanisms of gene regulation such as transcription factors — proteins that attach to specific sites on DNA to turn genes on and off — and certain RNA molecules.-***-"Greally adds that it's hard for anyone to talk about epigenetics without stirring up controversy. Different researchers have different definitions for the term, and there are still many questions about the mechanisms behind the regulation of gene expression. “We're in a bit of a mess in epigenetics,” Greally says. Mukherjee is “a thoughtful guy”, he adds. “But he's beginning to realize that he stepped on a land mine.'”-Comment: Make it too Lamarckian and you are dog meat. I didn't realize
 epigenetics was such a touchy subject for the hardliners.