Year: 2022

ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATION. "Ray's colleague and friend, Abed Chaudhury, a researcher at Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization, suggested another mechanism, based on two phenomena. The first was DNA homology: He suggested that small homologous sequences of Arabidopsis genome could be translated into RNA." https://lnkd.in/dv6b49K View in LinkedIn

THIRD ALTERNATIVE. "In November, 2005, researchers at the University of Washington and the University of Georgia proposed that, rather than a novel genetic mechanism causing the reversion, the HTH gene product might be a metabolic enzyme, which when mutated produces toxic and mutagenic compounds that act on the DNA." http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/26000/title/Mendel-upended-/ View in LinkedIn

EXPLANATIONS REJECTED. "Lolle and her colleagues, however, rejected these explanations. For one, the frequency at which some of the phenomena that Chaudhury and Ray proposed might occur were too small to account for the 10% reversion frequency that she and Pruitt had observed. "In fairness, they don't have all the data available." http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/26000/title/Mendel-upended-/ View in LinkedIn

FAVORED EXPLANATION. "The RNA cache, on the other hand, Lolle proposes, is tapped when plants are under stress and is perhaps more than a one-time, random event. It is maintained outside the normal genomic context, inherited, and copied back into the DNA. There is a strong precedent for this mechanism to reside in RNA action." http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/26000/title/Mendel-upended-/ View in LinkedIn

IMPACT OF EPIGENETICS. "Do Lolle's findings, if they turn out to be true, overturn Mendel's laws of inheritance? Some researchers say probably not, but they acknowledge that there are likely many undiscovered phenomena in transmission genetics that don't operate on a large enough scale to warrant throwing out the old rulebook. "Epigenetics has already shaken Mendel's laws," https://lnkd.in/dv6b49K View in LinkedIn

ODDITY. "We're trying to discover patterns in what seems to be chaos," says Charles Fenster, evolutionary biologist at the University of Maryland. "This interesting example is a departure from the known laws, but my guess is that it doesn't explain the vast majority of how genes are transmitted from generation to generation - the reason why individuals resemble each other. That's really the key issue, why individuals that are relatives resemble each other. That's why people are interested in genetics in the first place." https://lnkd.in/dv6b49K View in LinkedIn

IS IT TIME TO REVISE MENDEL in the light of newly found deviations from Mendel's laws? Monogenic traits whose genes are known are compliant with Mendel's laws. However, in the considerable time since his work, numerous new and unanticipated mechanisms of inheritance have come to light. Selected ones will follow. But is it not time for a new synthesis of inheritance and evolution in the light of these new findings? View in LinkedIn

THE MODERN SYNTHESIS has been the accepted consensus view of evolution. Developed in the 1930s and 1940s, Neo-Darwinism fused Mendelian genetics (1865) with Darwinian evolution (Origin of Species, 1859) into a new unified theory of evolution. https://lnkd.in/d5hFgkR View in LinkedIn

THE MODERN SYNTHESIS “is rightly regarded as one of the major achievements of biology and led to the widespread adoption of several core assumptions.” https://lnkd.in/din4RvV View in LinkedIn

NEW EXTENDED EVOLUTIONARY SYNTHESIS. “We begin by providing brief overviews of evo-devo, developmental plasticity, inclusive inheritance and niche construction, highlighting divergent interpretations.” An important paper, and long-overdue update of the Modern Synthesis, which is a little past its sell-by-date. https://lnkd.in/din4RvV View in LinkedIn