Re: Genetic Memory?


Uno Lapideus wrote:
> How do birds - my favorites are those incredible weaver birds
> (Ploceidae) - know how to build their nest?
>
> Bred in captivity, isolated from other birds, how do songbirds know how
> to warble their, highly specific, "tune"?
>
> The salmon (Salmonidae), busily building breeding strength in its vast
> pelagic hunting currents, how does it know how to find its way back to
> the one insignificant and remote specific stream where it years ago was
> spawned? Indeed, never having experienced such things before, how does
> it know that it makes sense jumping the rapids/falls encountered?
>
> How does the spider wasp (Pomilidae) larva know that it must consume
> non-vital parts of its living (but paralyzed) food source (usually a
> spider) first, making the food last until pupation time?
>
> The itty bitty spider, where did it learn how to build its intricate
> web?
>
> Where does an infant's grip response come from?
>
> A common answer to all of the above questions is usually
> "instincts"... Instinctual drives are said to be *inherent*
> dispositions towards particular actions in certain situations. In
> other words, *inherited* stimuli response/reaction patterns.
>
> Inherited, as in genetic memories? If not, how does evolution explain
> the concept of "instincts"?
>
> Reference: "Epigenetic memory of active gene transcription is inherited
> through somatic cell nuclear transfer," January 2005
> (http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/102/6/1957)

Why don't you suffocate in your sleep? Why does your heart keep
beating? Why will newborn babies hold their breath underwater?

It is scarry, but the behaviors of spiders and birds are likely no
different than many of the things that we take for granted about human
behavior. Why is there a genetic basis for some religious behaviors?
Why do wolf packs support the alpha pair?

Transcription is part of the regulation, but we are just learning about
how the pieces come together.

You can take a chicken egg, hatch a pullet, grow the chicken up in
isolation artificially inseminate it once it starts laying eggs and it
will exhibit working nesting behavior. It will lay a clutch of eggs
and stop laying, it will go into setting mode and turn the eggs every
15 minutes or so, at around day 18 it will end the setting mode and
stop turning the eggs and will tend to refuse to get off the nest and
go into a zombie mode. At 21 days of incubation the eggs will hatch
and within a couple of days the hen ends her zombie mode and starts her
brooding mode.

These behaviors have a genetic basis. In selecting for high egg
production we have selected for various changes in the cycle. Modern
production hens never enter the setting mode. Some lines may still
exhibit egg gathering and other presetting behaviors, but they do not
stop laying. There are several genetic means that this has been
accomplished because we can breed two lines of layers together and
produce birds that will go broody again. So both lines seem to have
different genetic defects. All that seems to be happening is hormonal
changes and associated changes in cellular biochemistry. You may not
want to believe that complex behaviors can be genetically encoded, but
they can.

Ron Okimoto


.

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