GeMes, Clusters of DNA Methylation under Genetic Control, Can Inform Genetic and Epigenetic Analysis of Disease is reported as
New tool pinpoints genetic sources of disease
Excerpt: “”But now, by detecting just one variation in DNA methylation, or one GeMe, a researcher will know that one or more of the few hundred methylated nucleotides are possibly causing the disease.”
My comment: A historical view of this current perspective is relevant to the detailed representations of how the epigenetic landscape becomes the physical landscape of DNA in the organized genomes of species from microbes to man.
Andrew Feinberg, M.D. | Johns Hopkins Medicine (2010)
See also: Reversible switching between epigenetic states in honeybee behavioral subcastes (2012) reported as Job swapping makes its mark on honeybee DNA
Excerpt: “What is exciting is that the genes that change back are the same genes that changed in the other direction initially — and the same ones that would regulate epigenetic behaviour,” says Feinberg.
Gene Robinson, a bee researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who was not involved in the research, says that although the paper does not necessarily prove that epigenetic mechanisms cause behavioural differences, “it demonstrates for the first time that if behaviour is reversible so is the methylation”.
Excerpt 2: A greater understanding of how epigenetics affects behaviour may lead to insights into human biology, Feinberg says, noting that epigenetic effects on human behaviour might express themselves in addiction, learning and memory. If the link between behaviour and methylation patterns “is true in a bee, it is likely to also be true in us”, he says.
My comment: Elekonich and Robinson (2000) cited Diamond, Binstock, and Kohl (1996) when they linked hormone-organized and hormone-activated behavior from mammals to insects via the conserved molecular mechanisms we detailed. The conserved molecular mechanisms were place into the context of an award-winning invited review: Human pheromones: integrating neuroendocrinology and ethology. See also: Honey bees as a model for understanding mechanisms of life history transitions and Epigenomics and the concept of degeneracy in biological systems.
Who or what is responsible for the failure of researchers to accept or acknowledge the accurate representations of biological facts in two recent reviews?
“Olfaction and odor receptors provide a clear evolutionary trail that can be followed from unicellular organisms to insects to humans…”
2) Nutrient-dependent/pheromone-controlled adaptive evolution: a model
“…the largest contributor to the development of our personal preferences may be the unconscious epigenetic effects of food odors and pheromones on hormones that organize and activate behavior. If so, the model represented here is consistent with what is known about the epigenetic effects of ecologically important nutrients and pheromones on the adaptively evolved behavior of species from microbes to man. Minimally, this model can be compared to any other factual representations of epigenesis and epistasis for determination of the best scientific ‘fit’.”
If scientific progress can only be made by vilifying those who have retarded it for more than a decade, evolutionary theorists who have continued to tout the pseudoscientific nonsense of mutations that somehow contribute to benefits and are manifested in species diversity should now be blamed for touting that nonsense when no experimental evidence has ever supported their claims. The theorists must be blamed for the current generation’s manifestations of diseases and disorders attributed to mutations that the theorists claimed were sometimes beneficial. If the theorists are not blamed for the lack of scientific progress towards the prevention and treatment of diseases and disorders, they will no doubt contribute to another generation’s ills.
The only way forward that I can see clearly is to force the theorists to learn about ecological variation and biophysically-constrained ecological adaptations or to force them to shut up when others become informed about where scientific progress has led us during the past 5-8 decades. For example, see: Genes without prominence: a reappraisal of the foundations of biology reported in the context of A Challenge to the Supremacy of DNA as the Genetic Material and in the context of the 5.5 minute-long video representation of: Nutrient-dependent / Pheromone-controlled adaptive evolution: (a mammalian model of thermodynamics and organism-level thermoregulation), or the pre-publication of Nutrient-dependent / Pheromone–controlled thermodynamics and thermoregulation.
For comparison, watch for more pseudoscientific misrepresentations of cause and effect from population geneticists touting “constraint-breaking” mutations, or other nonsense that they imply is the cause of species diversity. “In other words, genomic conservation and constraint-breaking mutation is the ultimate source of all biological innovations and the enormous amount of biodiversity in this world. In this view of evolution there is no need of considering teleological elements.” (p. 199)
Finally, see anything ever offered by Jay R. Feierman, who I think deserves vilification for insisting: “I am absolutely certain that if you showed this statement to any professor of biology or genetics in any accredited university anywhere in the world that 100% of them would say that “Random mutations are the substrate upon which directional natural selection acts” is a correct and true statement. ” And, as if his constant misrepresentations of biophysically-constrained cause and effect were not sufficient to demand his vilification by others, watch for additional displays of arrogance and ignorance associated with claims that: “Variation is not nutrient availability and the something that is doing the selecting is not the individual organism. A feature of an educated person is to realize what they do not know. Sadly, you don’t know that you have an incorrect understanding [of] Darwinian biological evolution.”
The biology teacher, PZ Myers also deserves vilification for insisting that anyone who disagrees with his uninformed approach to regurgitation of theory is a ‘crank’. One crank dies, another rises to take his place.
How can any educated person continue to deny that Darwin’s conditions of life are nutrient-dependent and pheromone-controlled or claim that mutations are somehow responsible for species diversity? Become a member of the ISHE’s human ethology group (for free) and ask Feierman, or ask PZ Myers what he knows about biophysically-constrained ecological adaptations. Most people who know anything about the basic principles of biology or levels of biological organization required to link sensory cause to behavior in species from microbes to man have already dismissed Feierman and Myers because they are ignorant and arrogant cranks.
“We will agree to disagree then.”
My comment: Clearly, there is no point to discussing anything revealed in the current extant literature with those who insist on living in the past. For example, PZ Myers wrote: “Alternative splicing does not violate the central dogma.” Keith Baverstock was too polite to tell him that alternative splicings are biophysically constrained by nutrient (energy) uptake. It would have made PZ Myers look like an idiot!
