Re: Scientists Claim to Find Mechanism of Natural Selection

["Allan Edels" <Edels@email.msn.com>]

All:

Some notes of mine interspersed within parts of the originals:
    (Allan E.)

-----Original Message-----
From: Jonathan R. Wagner <znc14@TTACS.TTU.EDU>
To: dinosaur@usc.edu <dinosaur@usc.edu>
Cc: gclaytor@flash.net <gclaytor@flash.net>; mrowe@indiana.edu
<mrowe@indiana.edu>
Date: Thursday, November 26, 1998 12:17 PM
Subject: Re: Scientists Claim to Find Mechanism of Natural Selection


        Hmmm... natural selection... dinosaurs... relevant? I suppose, I
just hope I'm not encouraging a raging non-dino debate here...

Greg Claytor wrote:
>Reprinted from www.foxnews.com
SNIP
>"Evolution used to be about arguments. Whoever had the best argument
>won, because there was no way to study it," said David Gardiner
        Is it just me, or is this statement wrong?

SNIP
======>>  I think that the statement is wrong on several counts - probably
reworded by the reporter.  One could say that ALL science outside the 'hard'
sciences (i.e. physics, chemistry, etc.) is about people arguing over their
views of various pieces of information.  [Actually, even in the hard
sciences, you can argue that everyting is merely opinions -  good,
fact-based opinions, but opinions, nonetheless].

>. By guiding the proteins,
>Hsp90 ensures their processes lead to normal development of their
>corresponding traits ? or their so-called expression ? in the body.
[...]
SNIP
>When a body falls under stress, Hsp90 attends to the crisis and can
>start to neglect its normal role of ensuring the correct expression of
>new proteins.
SNIP
>the problem does not appear to lie within the frogs?
>genetic codes, but in agents responsible for gene expression, [...]
>"What we?re seeing in the frogs is a developmental disruption,"
        Exactly!
======>> It seems to me that what the scientists involved were trying to
convey, was that via artificially changing the amounts of Hsp90, they were
able to cause certain kinds of mutations to be expressed.  These mutations
might be similar to those that would be useful to an organism in creating a
new species, were the genetic clock changes to be passed onto its offspring,
and that Hsp90 production might be one of the methods of reseting the
genetic clock of the offspring.  (I.e. Change the genes controlling Hsp90,
and you might produce extra legs, or wings, etc., because the genes for
expressing these structures merely require a nudge in the developmental
timeline - which Hsp90 seems to control).


SNIP


        Maybe Mickey, who has been so helpful in explaining molecular
biology to the list in the past, can touch on this. It sounds like these
folks have inadvertantly stumbled on/over/around the last couple decades of
biology.

SNIP
======>>  I think it would be a good idea for Mickey to help out us poor
amateurs.


.. or dinosaurs (there,
see, it all relates to dinosaurs... :) .


        Wagner



======>>  Allan Edels