From: CurtAdams@aol.com
Date: Tue Sep 22 1998 - 08:53:03 MDT
In a message dated 9/21/98 11:01:44 PM, jonkc@worldnet.att.net wrote:
>Peter Passaro Wrote:
>
>>The gene you have been discussing is a so called master regulator gene.
>>Genes in this category function during the development of organism to call
>>for cascades of cell differentiation and structural reorganization. In
>>this way they are interesting for the points you have mentioned, but, to
>>date, there is nothing that would indicate that there is a higher level
>>code
>
>I disagree, I think there is some evidence of a higher level code. The gene
>Gehring found does not deal with fine structure or gross structure or
>structure of any kind, it deals with abstract function. It can't have
>anything to do with construction details otherwise the same thing couldn't
>cause mouse cells to make mouse eyes and cause fly to cells make fly eyes.
>Somehow the abstract concept "an eye" actually has meaning to life and that
>smells like a language.
It's not a language in any sense; the gene has nothing to do with eyes. It
just turns on a whole bunch of other genes. These other genes, collectively,
make an eye. It's not a code either; if you find a new homeobox gene you
have no way to know what it does except by looking at the organism.
>>If we were to design large scale biological structures we would have to deal
>>with a number a variables that is staggering, not impossible, but much
>>guidance will have to come from the fields of complexity and chaos before
>>something like this is even thinkable.
>Perhaps, but perhaps not. The language of life must have a command similar to
>"repeat this construction N times" so changing the size of an organ might not
>be too difficult. Changing its shape might be only a little more complex.
>If random mutation and natural selection figured out a way to increase our
>brain size by a factor of 5 in only few hundred thousand years it can't be
>that hard.
Changing size and shape isn't that hard; but designing an organ is. There's
quite a bit more to a brain than the fact that it's three pounds of fat in
a lumpy shape :-) We could get a lot of mileage by adapting existing
organisms/organs, as opposed to designing new ones, and we are already doing
that with bacteria. You could, potentially, adapt a rabbit to eat some
poisonous plant weed by splicing in an appropriate detoxification enzyme.
But giving the rabbit a new organ - well, that's quite a ways off.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:49:36 MST