Terren Suydam wrote:
Hi Richard,
Thanks for the link, pretty intriguing. It's important to note that
the mechanism proposed is just a switch that turns specific genes
off... so properly understood, it's likely that the resolution
required to model this mechanism would not necessarily require
modeling the entire DNA strand. It seems more likely that these
methylation caps are being applied to very specific genes that
produce proteins heavily implicated in the dynamics of synapse
creation/destruction (or some other process related to memory). So
modeling the phenomenon could very possibly be done functionally.
Memories could only be passed to the child if 1) those DNA changes
were also made in the germ cells (i.e. egg/sperm) and 2) the DNA
changes involved resulted in a brain organization in the child that
mimicked the parent's brain. (1) is very unlikely but theoretically
possible; (2) is impossible for two reasons. One is, the methylation
patterns proposed involve a large number of neurons, converging on a
pattern of methylation; in contrast, a germ cell would only capture
the methylation of a single cell (which would then be cloned in the
developing fetus). Second, the hypothesized methylation patterns
represent a different medium of information storage in the mature
brain than what is normally considered to be the role of DNA in the
developing brain. It would truly be a huge leap to suggest that the
information stored via this alteration of DNA would result in that
information being preserved somehow in a developing brain.
There are plenty of other epigenetic phenomena to get Lamarck fans
excited, but this isn't one of them.
I see what you are saying.
I really want to distance myself from this a little bit (don't want to
seem like I am really holding the banner for Lamarck's crowd), but I
think the main conclusion that we can draw from this piece of research
is, as I said a moment ago, that we now have reason to believe that
there is *some* mechanism that connects memories to DNA modifications,
whereas if anyone had suggested such a link a few years ago they would
have been speculating on thin ice.
I definitely agree that getting from there to a situation in which
packages of information are being inserted into germ cell DNA is a long
road, but this one new piece of research has - surprisingly - just cut
the length of that road in half.
All fun and interesting, but now back to the real AGI....
Richard Loosemore
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