Richard,
You asked "can the state of the switches be preserved during reproduction?" According to the Nova show I saw about epigenome, they were able to induce a change in a mouse's epigenome that changed its appearance, then its children would be more likely to inherit the same changed appearance. They could also unchanged that particular epigenomic trait back to what it had been in a parent or grandparent. So they were able to change and unchanged traits that were inheritable. So the answer is yes. Ed Porter -----Original Message----- From: Richard Loosemore [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2008 2:44 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [agi] Lamarck Lives!(?) Ben Goertzel wrote: >> I know you're just playing here but it would be easy to empirically test this. Does junk DNA change between birth and death? Something tells me we would have discovered something that significant a long time ago. >> >> Terren > > well, loads of mutations occur in nuclear DNA between birth and death; > this is part of how aging occurs. > > There are specific DNA repair mechanisms that fix mutation errors that > occur during the cell's lifetime > > It seems quite plausible that these repair mechanisms might work > differently on coding and noncoding regions of the DNA Ah, hang on folks: what I was meaning was that the *state* of the junk DNA was being used, not the code. I am referring to the stuff that is dynamically interacting, as a result of which genes are switched on and off all over the place .... so this is a gigantic network of switches. I wouldn't suggest that something is snipping and recombining the actual code of the "junk" DNA, only that the state of the switches is being used to code for something. Question is: can the state of the switches be preserved during reproduction? Richard Loosemore ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
