BBC Focus Magazine

[xgeomax]

Hello everyone...

I've already a personal... scientific opinion about this topic... but I would like to know if you agree with me: few moths ago I read the book about the Biology of Believe written by Lipton who seems to be an expert scientist... actually genetist... but with a little wide interest in new age way of thinking.

In fact his theory in my point of view seems to be a bit fantastic and not too much confirmed by analisys and surveys... I'm talking about the great value that he gives to the cell's membrane as a responsible factor on the influence of the environmental change to the genetic mutations...

I'm not a biologist... but I've always stutied that the most important rule is brought by the DNA that contains our genetic material and that is transmitted through generations... It's the Darwin's law that seems to be overcomed, in Lipton's theory, with the Lamark's law where is said that the environment is responsible for the mutation....

What to say? I hope in many answers!

Bye! mAx

[The Beige Avenger]

It's not the environment that triggers the mutation, other than certain circumstances of course, but rather, the change in environment (be it physical or sociological or whateverical) favours certain members of the species over others e.g. a colder climate will favour those who eat more and can store more fats so therefore over time the species will become fatter. It's not a mutation into a fatter version of the same species which eventually comes distinct from its forebears but an effect caused by natural selection.

or are we talking nature vs nurture?

[Shadowwolf]

...but I would like to know if you agree with me:

Well I can't really say either way as I've not read it myself, but if he is as light on actual evidence to back his claims as you indicate, well it's not a ringing endorsement or a solid base for any claims or any attempts to reconcile whatever spiritual notions he may hold with science.

Welcome along btw.

[M Paul Lloyd]

Hi there xgeomax, would that be this Lipton by any chance?
http://www.money-health-relationships.c ... ipton.html
I haven't read anything by him but to be honest I thought that any environmental impact produced small mutations in the DNA which is the main driving force behind evolution. So rather than breaking with Darwin's ideas I think it tends to reinforce them.

I am certainly no expert but by way of an example (that I do know a little bit about) it has been noted in the areas surrounding Chernobyl http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11023530 that species are in decline due to damage to the DNA and this raises the possibility that other types of environmental stress may also 'harm' DNA, but then again is 'harm' or 'mutation' not merely the key to evolution?

[xgeomax]

Hi there... thanks for your answers....

Certainly I agree with you guys... but as I'm not a biologist or a genetist like I said it is hard for me to have a definitive opinion about this topic... in fact recently I had the opportunity to meet a post-graduate in biology who is studying stem cells and he told me many informations about this interesting field and what grasped my attention has been the fact that in some directions this idea about the environment as precursor of mutation or orientation of the specialisation of the cell has an importance...

Which means that maybe in a different way.... maybe not with every type of cell.... the influence of the environment on the cell... through the membrane.... actually exsists... even if right now it's difficult to regulate and find out the exact connection between an external "force" such as light, temperature, pressure, magnetic or electrical field and the way a cell works or even mutates...

[xgeomax]

nevertheless.... there we are we one of the last topic written in the the last FOCUS:

"Ghosts in your genes
The human genome carries more than just genes, it remembers the environment and experiences from before you were born - the ghosts of your ancestors. Evolutionary geneticist JV Chamary explores the epigenome"

if youn think about this.... it's what Lipton is actually telling... at the end of his book he actually wrote that the influence of the environment is written in our genes in a way that they can actually contain informations about preview lifes.... BUT this is definitively not my believe......

[M Paul Lloyd]

I may be missing the point here xgeomax but I don't think anyone within credible scientific circles would want to suggest that DNA can really transfer an inherited memory of past lives.

I'm pretty certain that would be a shortcut to losing your standing with your peer review associates as it is pure scienfiction and I presume if Lipton's work suggests this then it is pure fiction?

As for the good J V Chamary's point I'm pretty sure that stems from the principle that our DNA has an encoded 'memory' of its own genetic decent, so just as I could have my genetic history mapped (where my ancestors came from) through my DNA so any species can also be mapped to discover its common ancestor.

[Shadowwolf]

Any talk of 'Past lives' as in the notion that you were a Roman Centurion, a Saxon peasant and a butler at Carton Demesne in earlier incarnations, is fantasy and nothing else. That's not what he meant was it?

[xgeomax]

totally agree with you guys.... as I said I immediately felt the story of Lipton's research as a scienfiction... but I wanted to understand a bit more about this idea just to have more material to use when I have to face someone who try to consider his results as authentic revolution of the understansing of the intire biology...

As always.... the more you are ignorant the more you think to be right!

[Healerman]

"Ghosts in your genes. The human genome carries more than just genes, it remembers the environment and experiences from before you were born - the ghosts of your ancestors. Evolutionary geneticist JV Chamary explores the epigenome"

Epigenetics has provided a means of modifying inheritance in response to environmental pressures. It has been demonstrated across three generations, at least, and also it has been indicated that it can be subject to reinforcement. How far reaching can it be? It's a new field, and we don't know yet.

Epigenetics does not involve changes to the genome (as far as we know) but alterations in how the genes are expressed. This process has been branded by some as neo-Lamarkism.

I've followed this subject with great interest as I have thought for a long time that the most useful thing that a Mendelian/Darwinian system could evolve, would be some form of Lamarkian inheritance, allowing species to respond more quickly to environmental pressures than chance mutation would allow.

The human genome project didn't provide as many answers as it was hoped. Epigenetics is the new frontier in that respect.

[worldmaker]

Healerman,

You beat me to the punch in expressing more fluently than I could something critical about nature's ability to adapt more quickly and effectively to modest change than just selection processes.

If you think about it for any period of time over millions of years nature ought to select for its ability to adapt quickly to any change, over a handful of generations, rather than rely on the randomness of naturally selection through mutation. So the fittest, at adaption, do survive to pass on their capability to successive generations, and even if this ability remains dormant during prolonged period of stability a sudden change triggers it.

Thanks!