CLASSIC GENETICS; GET WITH THE PROGRAM

People who dabble in evolutionary theory always seem to be in trouble with someone. Charles Darwin first fully expounded on a theory that Herbert Spencer, a contemporary philosopher, cleverly reduced to two words, “natural selection”. It is a phenomenon that Darwin couched in terms of the physical being while recognizing a behavioral component as well. Like all great discoveries, the main message was there but he skillfully protected himself from criticism by avoiding direct confrontation with contemporary beliefs; evolution refuted then, as it does now, the universally held belief that “God did it”. Some of that protective barrier he erected was by not referencing humans, leaving open the escape route that humans were somehow different while not so subtly implying that humans evolved. The claim, although never stated as such, was then and still is that humans are different because we guide our behavior by “thinking”. Some still adamantly believe mental activity somehow has a spiritual basis without origin or substance, different from a leg or and arm; we could generate a “thought” but not an “arm”; thus, ignore the tail that can regenerated on lizard.

Once we accepted that such things as emotions and senses existed and have a chemical basis we still resisted the revelation. We know drugs can change behavior and we know that cytokines and hormones can alter our reactivity to each other and to our environment. We know we can precisely define the classic “fright and flight” in chemical terms. Thus, we may find it hard to accept, but still in the realm of possibility, that words such as hunger, fear, excitement, and a long list of etcetera can apply to the lowest of animals—human terms. However, when it comes to saying a chemical reaction can be hungry some but not all of us object—just a bridge to far they say.

However, if you refuse to accept that transition, you refuse to accept that evolution happened but as a biologist would be ashamed—another of those “pesky” emotions—to admit it. Without the confluence of chemistry with biology and man, you are saying God or some spirit did it. Without accepting that transition, you are saying there is a purpose for life. You are doing what Charles Darwin did, which is that you are “skillfully protected yourself from criticism” by avoiding direct confrontation with the facts—you are a biological coward afraid to stand up for what you say you believe. Darwin could have been hung or some such terrible thing but in 2014, that will not happen, which is evidence have progressed a little since then.

If you have come this far, I would judge you are ready to look at “natural selection” in a new light. Darwin pointed out that organisms that were bettered adapted to the environment they find themselves tend to survive and produce more offspring: elegant in its simplicity. His barnacles, a subphylum related to crabs and lobsters he was especially interested in, and all other forms of life fit his model: essentially, he could find no exception; that is good science.

Ever since Mendel pointed out units of inheritance, geneticists have been refining his thoughts. Recently geneticists are reducing Mendelian “chunky” concepts of inheritance to a more detailed chemical level. Chemists have reduce inheritance to a scheme classically simplified as, DNA to RNA to Protein. The message is clear, although much takes place between the transcription of DNA and the ribosomal translation of RNA into protein, but the final protein is what counts.

The human genome is composed of a haploid set of chromosomes. There are some where in the neighborhood of 3.3 billion base pairs in the human genome that is billion with at “B”; a lot of nonsense and a lot of information. Scientists not only know the sequence of the human genome, they know a lot about that sequence. They do what they refer to as GWAS studies or genome wide association studies looking for what they refer to as SNPs or single nucleotide polymorphisms, which probably represents some of the most advanced form of modern scientific studies. Most of these studies seem to be epidemiology in nature, thus relate to medicine looking for the cause of disease or looking for a hint about how drugs interact with the genome to treat a disease—that is where the research money is and this is where it is paying off—sort of. Therefore, the SNPs that count are in those areas of the DNA that are somehow associated with functional transcripts of that macromolecule: regulatory nucleotide sequences, tRNA, ribozymes, rRNA, and spliceosomes, mRNA, etc to yield functioning proteins or peptide eventually.    

A remark, such as there are 50 million SNPs in the human genome implies there a standard, usual, or normal genome. When you couple this with the remark that SNPs are well conserved that implies scientist know the structure of the first DNA, which is not true. What it means is that there are 50 million instances of “either or sequences” of bases and their cognates. If your sequenced sample is from a human, it has to be compatible with life. Geneticists have done a remarkable job of validating, sorting out, and ordering DNA sequences in the time line of the earth’s biota.

A SNP says nothing of the quality of “that life” with which it is associated. The discovery of the simplistic relationship that three nucleotides codes for one amino acid was exciting news in the chemistry world. However, the idea that a SNP could change that code was shattering when scientists talk about 50 million of them and 250 thousand enzymes, let alone many other proteins coded for in the genome and multiples of them related spliceosome function. Mind boggling  until we understand the natural mindless magic of natural selection. If a protein produced does harm, the organism with that DNA will not survive. If the protein contributes to survival that organism lives and reproduces. Three billion or so years of “natural selections” have resulted in self-contained “massive” thermodynamic chemical-physical equilibriums we recognize as organisms. The guiding light through all of this has been raw cruel survival.

Over the course of natural history, something changed. If organisms did not adapt to a change in the environment they changed them selves to fit the environment or they change the environment to protect their existing equilibriums. It was a balance describable, as “biology hates extremes”. This was more than just changing from deterministic chemistry to natural selection; it was organisms making choices beyond simple survival: quality of life. It was still nagging slow laborious natural selection with survival subject to trial and error exercised over time. With “learned selection”, the organism had input, albeit limited input, into the selection. Those 50 million SNPs still played a part, however, learned selection does not change the DNA, which is the thing classic geneticist do no accept or seem to want to even understand about learned selection

Humans adapt and change to physical and social environment. Undeniably, we have a background of traits such as greed, xenophobia, gregariousness, and hierarchy dominance, for example, born out of natural selection. We have been molding and shaping these traits for 600,000 years or so by natural selection and learned selection. Everyone knows there is no recognizable cutoff point between bestial behavior and humanization. Everyone knows that behavior is genetic: dogs act like dogs, humans act like humans because of what is in their genes. Everyone knows one-person acts differently from another person and scientists are telling us why from their super sophisticated GWAS studies relates to SNPs; yet, we seem blinded to the idea that personality variation is somehow not genetic. We know all of this while we allow variations of these inborn traits to cause us trouble in everyday life. We shade the things we like with terms such as “morally correct” or “natural order” or good behavior and bad behavior. Against a background of Darwian inspired survival of the fittest, we struggle with terms and expression such as survival of the fittest, abortion, death penalty, killing in self-defense, feminism, racism, or quality of life all done trying to shape our behavior. Yet, we have some  moralistic scientist running about acting shocked that some one would suggest martial fidelity relates to genetic propensities or criminal activity has a genetic component and heaven forbid they mention politics. It is mind boggling that the scientist, who should know the most, the classic geneticist, seems to be denying this is the case by denying evolutionary biology is science.    

Evolutionary Biology: The study of the psychological adaptations of humans to the changing physical and social environment, especially of changes in brain structure, cognitive mechanisms, and behavioral differences among individuals.

My message to classic geneticists is simple “Get with the program.

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