Comments on: Lamarckian Mechanism in Ciliates

By: Colugo

Colugo — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 14:07:20 +0000

“progenitor trait.” Gack. I mean “descendant trait.” That wasn’t a typo; that was a brain blip.

By: Colugo

Colugo — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 13:08:25 +0000

Suggestion for “Lamarckian”: A phenotypic novelty (either in kind or degree) that appears during the life cycle of an individual due to an interaction of that individual with the environment that is transmitted to the next generation (there is a correlation between parental novelty and progenitor trait).

By: OneRandomScientist

OneRandomScientist — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 11:31:40 +0000

Heh, sorry to be such a frump. I just envision armies of ID proponents pointing to the resurgence of Lamarckism as evidence that genetics is full of it. ::shudder::

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 07:05:34 +0000

Well, you’re both wrong, and a couple of curmudgeons to boot. This is not “not-Lamarckian” because Lamarck didn’t know about genes and had other wrong mechanistic ideas …. by that logic you could not use the term “Darwinian” because Darwin had equally unformed ideas about genes mechanistically. This is, rather, not-Lamarckian because the experiments do not demonstrate that altered information is not passed on.It is, however, interesting because it is an alternative transmission pathway than what one would expect using the bacteria-human model biases.Jeezh… glad you guys never met Mendel, we’d be nowhere…!

By: OneRandomScientist

OneRandomScientist — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 00:30:47 +0000

I’ve read the article, and I find it hard to justify the use of the word “Lamarckian” when the epigenetic information is being stored in nucleic acids (and I agree with the previous poster that I find the word distasteful in general). If I remember correctly, the mechanism is barely epigenetic in the sense that changes in the DNA will change the cell’s RNA, and that change will then propogate…genetically.It’s fascinating, though…I think it’s supposed to be a defense against transposons and the like? Since the germline nucleus isn’t transcribed, it’s resistant to selfish genetic elements. The macronucleus, which is destroyed, destroys all of the transposons with it.

By: John S. Wilkins

John S. Wilkins — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 21:53:20 +0000

I tire of the use of “Lamarckian” in modern press releases and book titles. Lamarck held that somatic traits acquired during the lifetime of a (multicellular, as we would now say) organism were passed on after a process of a “feu ethere” or vital fluid making the changes. The inheritance of non-genetic factors is no more Lamarckian than the lack of observable relativistic effects makes something Newtonian. Lamarck had no concept of genes, and no understanding of anything like the Weismann Barrier, which follows him by a century or so.The idea that ciliate changes to the cell surface can be inherited is no more Lamarckian than the acquisition of maternal antibodies in placental mammals. That there are non-genetic inheritance pathways doesn’t make them Lamarckian, it makes them non-Weismannian.Sorry, personal bugbear in play.