Scientists now admit: DNA is just passive form of information. It has no control over cellular processes.
http://nautil.us/issue/68/context/its-the-end-of-the-gene-as-we-know-itAround that image of the code a whole world order of rank and privilege soon became reinforced. These genes, we were told, come in different “strengths,” different permutations forming ranks that determine the worth of different “races” and of different classes in a class-structured society. A whole intelligence testing movement was built around that preconception, with the tests constructed accordingly.
The image fostered the eugenics and Nazi movements of the 1930s, with tragic consequences. Governments followed a famous 1938 United Kingdom education commission in decreeing that, “The facts of genetic inequality are something that we cannot escape,” and that, “different children ... require types of education varying in certain important respects.”
Post-war research sensibly focused more on the biochemistry, but with similar preconceptions. The existence of a powerful code-script seemed to be confirmed with the discovery of the structure of DNA by Watson and Crick in 1953. They revealed how the sequences of components (called nucleotides) in DNA could serve as a template—a code—for a protein, much as a typewriter sequences letters to form words. So the accepted “central dogma” could be conceived as the one-way flow of information from the code in the gene:
DNA template → proteins → developing characteristics;
as if production of the words alone is tantamount to writing the whole “book” of a complex being.
Then came the brilliant technology for sequencing genes (the components or “letters” in the DNA) in the whole genome. Its application, at enormous cost, in the Human Genome Project would, we were told, reveal “what it is to be human.” Extravagant promises were made that genes would soon be found that control human intelligence, social behavior, and complex diseases.
Now, in low-cost, highly mechanized procedures, the search has become even easier. The DNA components—the letters in the words—that can vary from person to person are called single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs. The genetic search for our human definition boiled down to looking for statistical associations between such variations and differences in IQ, education, disease, or whatever.
For years, disappointment followed: Only a few extremely weak associations between SNPs and observable human characteristics could be found. Then another stroke of imagination. Why not just add the strongest weak associations together until a statistically significant association with individual differences is obtained? It is such “polygenic scores,” combining hundreds or thousands of SNPs, varying from person to person, and correlating (albeit weakly) with trait scores such as IQ or educational scores, that form the grounds for the vaulting claims we now witness.
Today, 1930s-style policy implications are being drawn once again. Proposals include gene-testing at birth for educational intervention, embryo selection for desired traits, identifying which classes or “races” are fitter than others, and so on. And clever marketizing now sees millions of people scampering to learn their genetic horoscopes in DNA self-testing kits.
So the hype now pouring out of the mass media is popularizing what has been lurking in the science all along: a gene-god as an entity with almost supernatural powers. Today it’s the gene that, in the words of the Anglican hymn, “makes us high and lowly and orders our estate.”
In her 1984 book, The Ontogeny of Information, the philosopher of science Susan Oyama warned, “Just as traditional thought placed biological forms in the mind of God, so modern thought finds ways of endowing the genes with ultimate formative power.”
In scientific, as well as popular descriptions today, genes “act,” “behave,” “direct,” “control,” “design,” “influence,” have “effects,” are “responsible for,” are “selfish,” and so on, as if minds of their own with designs and intentions.
The long-suppressed logic of Johansenn that has stalked the gene-god for decades has come home to roost. Scientists now understand that the information in the DNA code can only serve as a template for a protein. It cannot possibly serve as instructions for the more complex task of putting the proteins together into a fully functioning being, no more than the characters on a typewriter can produce a story.So the hype now pouring out of the mass media is popularizing what has been lurking in the science all along: a gene-god as an entity with almost supernatural powers. Today it’s the gene that, in the words of the Anglican hymn, “makes us high and lowly and orders our estate.”
In her 1984 book, The Ontogeny of Information, the philosopher of science Susan Oyama warned, “Just as traditional thought placed biological forms in the mind of God, so modern thought finds ways of endowing the genes with ultimate formative power.”
In scientific, as well as popular descriptions today, genes “act,” “behave,” “direct,” “control,” “design,” “influence,” have “effects,” are “responsible for,” are “selfish,” and so on, as if minds of their own with designs and intentions.
This can seem confusing to those of us indoctrinated in the idea that there must be a set of genetic instructions prior to development: If not in the DNA code, then where? By the 1980s, research findings started to turn that notion on its head.
It is such discoveries that are turning our ideas of genetic causation inside out. We have traditionally thought of cell contents as servants to the DNA instructions. But, as the British biologist Denis Noble insists in an interview with the writer Suzan Mazur,“The modern synthesis has got causality in biology wrong … DNA on its own does absolutely nothing until activated by the rest of the system … DNA is not a cause in an active sense. I think it is better described as a passive data base which is used by the organism to enable it to make the proteins that it requires.”"
My comment: This article was written by an evolution believer. He doesn't tell (or doesn't want to tell) anything about epigenetic mechanisms and factors that control the DNA. Instead he fabricates imaginary stories about organisms that evolved without DNA. How ridiculous. Pseudoscientists are so lost with their theories. But as we can see, the traditional concept of a 'gene' is changing. The cell uses passive DNA for building functional RNA molecules. Because epigenetic mechanisms have control over the DNA and cellular processes, it's obvious that any change in organisms are due to epigenetic regulation of pre-existing biological information or loss of it. There's no junk-DNA. But mutational burden is an observed fact. That's why genetic entropy is an inevitable phenomenon. Evolution never happened.
My comment: This article was written by an evolution believer. He doesn't tell (or doesn't want to tell) anything about epigenetic mechanisms and factors that control the DNA. Instead he fabricates imaginary stories about organisms that evolved without DNA. How ridiculous. Pseudoscientists are so lost with their theories. But as we can see, the traditional concept of a 'gene' is changing. The cell uses passive DNA for building functional RNA molecules. Because epigenetic mechanisms have control over the DNA and cellular processes, it's obvious that any change in organisms are due to epigenetic regulation of pre-existing biological information or loss of it. There's no junk-DNA. But mutational burden is an observed fact. That's why genetic entropy is an inevitable phenomenon. Evolution never happened.
