[HN Gopher] In sexy worms, inheritance beyond genes can help evo...
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In sexy worms, inheritance beyond genes can help evolution
Author : nsoonhui
Score : 31 points
Date : 2022-04-20 13:23 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.quantamagazine.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.quantamagazine.org)
| Metacelsus wrote:
| Just FYI the biological mechanisms at play here in worms are
| quite different from those in mammals, so don't expect this to
| generalize to humans.
| skdk3k2 wrote:
| antattack wrote:
| "the new study provides valuable clues about the potential for
| short-term epigenetic inheritance to influence longer-term
| evolution, too."
|
| Chemistry is different but mechanism is pretty universal,
| across the species.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Still, genetic regulation changes would somehow have to end
| up pushed into gametes in order to make it to the embryo. Or
| maybe there could be a placental mechanism for passing
| genetic regulation from the mother to the embryo. The latter
| would be more likely to work, so I'd bet on that if the
| mechanism exists at all. Either way, finding a bit of
| Lamarckian flavor in nature would be something else, after
| all these years.
|
| A link I just found when searching news for lamarckian
| evolution: https://brainblogger.com/2018/01/08/lamarckian-
| evolution-is-...
| stereocodes wrote:
| Sexy worms... Like this
| https://images.app.goo.gl/1o3e2ZnPsMhTpbDv6
| cryptonector wrote:
| I keep waiting for someone to discover an evolutionary mechanism
| that looks Lamarckian. It's not that I think Darwinian evolution
| is wrong (I don't), but that a combination of Darwinian and
| Lamarckian evolution would be really cool and rather surprising.
|
| Here's the only relevant thing on the first page of results for
| "lamarckian evolution" in news:
| https://brainblogger.com/2018/01/08/lamarckian-evolution-is-...
| vmception wrote:
| > But when environmental conditions become stressful, the worms
| become sexually attractive much sooner. For them, sex is the
| equivalent of a Hail Mary pass -- a desperate gamble that if
| their offspring are more genetically diverse, some will fare
| better under the new, rougher conditions.
|
| I really feel like this was written for commentary and parallels
| on humans. The article also starts with "organisms swiping right"
| to set the tone for this "worm" based research paper.
| jrhawley wrote:
| This whole topic of trans-generational inheritance and non-
| genetic factors affecting evolutionary fitness is, in my opinion,
| an undervalued topic in evolutionary biology today. If treating
| diseased cells with a particular drug elicits the over-expression
| of a microRNA to protect the cell, could that sustained
| expression be passed onto daughter cells without genetic
| mutation? That would be a case of some information (microRNA
| expression) being passed over generations of cells that
| influences phenotype (response to drug treatment). It's not
| strictly DNA-based, but it should still have some effect on
| evolutionary dynamics.
|
| I (unsuccessfully) tried to tackle some of these ideas during my
| PhD, looking at other modifications to the DNA fibers like DNA
| methylation, transcription factor binding, and the 3D coiling of
| DNA inside the cell, and how that influences cell populations.
|
| There are some interesting studies in plants from a few years ago
| [0-1] and more recent studies using some single-cell high
| throughput sequencing techniques [2] to investigate what role
| these non-genetic perturbations might play in evolution and
| disease.
|
| [0]:
| https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/jo...
|
| [1]: https://academic.oup.com/genetics/article/188/1/215/6063285
|
| [2]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1198-z
| marcodiego wrote:
| In our species, inheritance in terms of money and properties
| means a lot in terms of "social" evolution.
|
| More serious: some epigentic factors do play a role.
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