Discerning The Will Of God

[JenellYB]

There some new evidence, I think, for something like Lamarkism in that how genes are expressed can change in response to environmental conditions. I believe this change can be permanent.

 

Dutch

 

I don't think that's really anything like Lamarkism, but another level of complexity to genetics being more recently realized. Several discoveries along that line...

There are mechanaisms within the organism/genetic material that respond to things that "turn them on or off." The simplist demonstration of this is how chemical changes in the body at puberty "turn on" certain genetic controlled functions.

In another scenario I mentioned above, about high rates of type 2 diabetes in some populations actually involves genetics that under different environmental condtions, of high activity levels and chronic nutritional shortage, acted to allow the body to function more efficiently, so that those with that genetic advantage survived while others on the same limited diets starved to death. But how that genetic material functions involved such on-off triggers in the lifestyle/environment, and once that genetic material has 'triggered' as diabetis type 2 tendency, it can't be changed back to function as a starvation redistance merely by changing the diet and environmental condtions after the fact.

 

There are also far more, and more complex, interactions with both environmental factors and with other genetic material inherited along with it in the organism. This not just in whether a phenotypal effect will occur, but actually whether or not cartain 'genes' get turned on or not, as well, as how they turn on, ie, starvation resistance vs diabetis type 2.

 

What was long thought to be just a bunch of useless 'junk' among chromosomes and genes, genes that seemed to 'do nothing', be non-functional, is now realized as being such genes as that simply don't 'turn on', activate, unless there are certain condtions to trigger them. Those 'activating factors' can be from outside the organism, or actually within it.

 

A fascinating Russian experiment and study some years ago involving blue foxes as commonly raised commerically for the fur market resulted in some astounding breakthroughs in this regard. The experiment was to start selectively breeding the foxes with only one critical selection criteria..."tameness." Other than basic healthiness, no other factor was used in selecting animals for breeding. The point and goal of the experiment/study was first a practical one, in that more high-strung, nervous, wild, shy, and fearful animals were not only much harder to handle and care for in raising them for fur, but also resulted in higher stress in the animals, which adversely affected breeding, maintaining health and condition, and even injury, since terrified animals even killed themselves bashing frantically against cage walls when there were unusual activites going on. Secondarily, biologists saw it as a perfect experiement for studying how wild species may have evolved into domestic animals, such as dogs from wolves.

Totally unexpected were changes in the foxes' phenotype, physical appearance, that came along with successive generations of selecting for 'tameness,' Things never even know to exist in the fox genome began to appear...bigger floppier ears, tails going from straight to curled up, even white markings! They were, in quite a few ways, beginning to display DOG-like physical traits! Yet, DNA analysis sis NOT show presence of new mutations for these 'new' traits. The best theory they have for that now is that along with tameness, reducing flight or fight responses, fear responses, the animals body chemicals also changed, and those changes 'turned on' genetic material that had been there previously, but not active.

 

Jenell