Re: Human Genome

From: Chris Taylor (Christopher.Taylor@man.ac.uk)
Date: Tue Feb 13 2001 - 13:59:05 GMT

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Message-ID: <3A893DA9.47BDD5C5@bioinf.man.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 13:59:05 +0000
From: Chris Taylor <Christopher.Taylor@man.ac.uk>
Organization: University of Manchester
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Human Genome
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> mice embryos with reptilian bone structures

and chickens with teeth and scaly tails (aaargh, who will stop these
mad(wo)men).

Able was bang on really about the gene thing - we know next to nothing
about interactions between genes, or the non-linear relationship between
number of 'genes' and number of traits. Also, large numbers of genes
only have putative functions assigned; even in yeast, a third of the
genes ('orphans') have no known function - not even a hint - yeast only
has 6000 genes and we can't crack that yet.

So overall we probably shouldn't react one way or the other.

However(!), the genetic behaviourists (and the 'evolutionary'
'psychologists' who I am still annoyed at for nicking the good name)
would seem to have been relying on the fact that there were enough genes
to build the physical organism (20-30000 as for other large
multicellular orgs) plus another bagfull to 'program' our grey matter,
so this makes their lives more difficult I think.

Just got Wade's snippola:
> ...segmental duplication is an important source of innovation...

Yep. There is some 'true' novelty, but the vast bulk of the 'new' comes
from reuse of the old, with tweaking. This is definitely a memetic (as
discussed in some posts a few days ago) as well as a genetic mode thing.

Cheers, Chris.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chris Taylor (chris@bioinf.man.ac.uk)
http://bioinf.man.ac.uk/ ťpeopleťchris
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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In reply to: Vincent Campbell: "RE: Human Genome"
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