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From: sa209@utb.shv.hb.se (Claes Andersson)
Subject: Re: Lamarckian Evolution
Message-ID: <1995Feb5.132734.948@gdunix.gd.chalmers.se>
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Date: Sun, 5 Feb 1995 19:46:11 GMT
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minch@lotka.stanford.edu wrote:
>Isn't anyone familiar with the credit assignment problem? Or the protein
>folding problem? A Lamarckian mechanism would have to
>
>1) infer the genetic causes of a phenotypic trait (which occupies medical
>geneticists for years just to trace back a single disease),
>
>2) design a sequence or sequences to fix the problem (which is still
>generally beyond the capabilities of pharmaceutical biochemistry), and
>
>3) insert this sequence or these sequences at the appropriate loci in the
>genome, editing out the previous sequences, *in every germ cell or
>gamete-forming stem cell*.
>
>Now, if you manage to leap the first two hurdles, and you're rearing up
>for the third, why won't it occur to you to apply the process to *all*
>somatic cells instead? Wouldn't that be a tremendous advantage? And if it
>could have been discovered, it most certainly would have been by now.
>
>Of course, doing this in artificial lifeforms is an entirely different
>matter, and when someone finally comes up with any we'll certainly have to
>address the question there. Still, I believe there's some inherent value
>to the species--even artificial species--in having multiple independent
>levels of adaptation, rather than trying to collapse it all into a fixed
>population of immortal organisms (perhaps only one!).

 Oh! What a relieve, reinforcements finally arrived! I have tried to explain
for several weeks why Lamarckism is impossible and why it's completely
unimportant question weather it would be good to as someone put it "encode"
accuired traits. It would be like telling your maths teacher that it is more
convenient to look up the anwers in the solutions than to solve the tasks.
And this without seeing that someone must have solved them once.

Claes Andersson. University of Bors. Sweden
