[HN Gopher] Francis Crick's "Central Dogma" was misunderstood
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Francis Crick's "Central Dogma" was misunderstood
Author : ctoth
Score : 47 points
Date : 2024-12-01 18:24 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.asimov.press)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.asimov.press)
| moomin wrote:
| Surely prion diseases are an example of protein to protein, which
| the article specifically says was part of the CD?
|
| I'm not unhappy with the tone of the article suggesting that
| Watson, yet again, vastly misunderstood the work of his betters
| while taking credit for it.
| benlivengood wrote:
| I think if prions were considered violations of CD then enzymes
| or at least ribosomes would be considered to violate CD as
| well.
| birdiesanders wrote:
| The "dogma" is "information flow from proteins back to genetic
| material does not occur" not that proteins can't transfer
| information. Regardless of considering "shape" as information
| or not, the transfer is not violating that statement, the
| information is fully trapped in the protein and not flowed back
| to DNA.
| transcriptase wrote:
| It seems the articles purpose is less about what could best be
| described as dunking on what 10th graders are taught about
| molecular biology for simplicity's sake, and more about
| discrediting Watson by reframing the past, and chipping away at
| his legacy because of... well, you know.
| throwbmw wrote:
| What?
| jakubsuchy wrote:
| Because...you know...he stole the DNA discovery from
| Rosalind Franklin
| 77pt77 wrote:
| > Watson, yet again, vastly misunderstood the work of his
| betters while taking credit for it.
|
| Is this regarding Rosalind Franklin's data?
| twic wrote:
| As the first figure says:
|
| > Information here means the sequence of the amino acid
| residues, or other sequences related to it.
|
| Prions do not transfer sequence information between proteins,
| so this is in keeping with Crick's idea.
|
| I've always assumed that Watson understood Crick's idea
| perfectly well, but used the simpler formulation because it was
| easier to communicate, while still being mostly accurate.
| pknomad wrote:
| Unfortunate nomenclature aside, this issue highlights the
| difference between models and reality in science and how students
| can take these models too literally and thus easily conflate the
| two in pedagogy. Here's an embarrassing story for me: I didn't
| realize (or at least didn't internalize) that not all cells in
| the human body conform to to the canonical image of the cell that
| we see in Biology textbooks
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(biology)#/media/File:Cel...)
| until I finished oncology and embryology class in my senior year
| back in 2015. For example, erythrocytes (RBCs) don't have nucleus
| and mitochondria. Some hepatocytes even have more than 1 nucleus
| (polyploidy).
|
| I still don't know how I went through my cell biology class in
| sophomore year without understanding this. Maybe I missed the
| forest for the trees (curse you clathrin mediated endocytosis!)
| exmadscientist wrote:
| ...well _that_ makes a lot more sense now. Flashing back to my
| undergrad biology class, I honestly never understood what was so
| important about the "central dogma" or why it was so important
| to spend so much time on. Now, reading its origin story, it is
| immediately apparent why it's interesting and such an important
| feature of life to understand. (Tangent: anyone who complained
| about mRNA vaccines "corrupting your DNA" fell afoul of exactly
| what the central dogma is about.)
|
| More broadly, it is fascinating to see how often this happens. So
| many ideas that are spread or taught in their "modern form" are
| trite or difficult or just disconnected. And then you see them in
| their original place, often in the original discoverer's words...
| and it's immediately obvious what they really mean and why
| they're so important. (Another example: Einstein's (special)
| theory of relativity. Read his original papers! They're short and
| explain everything!) I'd suggest the solution is just reading
| more primary source material, but unfortunately the opposite is
| also true: plenty of stuff is illegible in its original form,
| too. (Maxwell's formulation of Maxwell's equations comes to mind
| here.)
| kleton wrote:
| It is difficult to entirely avoid contamination by DNA.
| https://x.com/p_j_buckhaults/status/1861083163868672204
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