Re: Link to intriguing article about yet another leap within the 'genetics-explotion'


"John Edser" <edser@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:djsbe1$t8t$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> "Peter F" notdisclosed@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:-
>
> > Subject: Link to intriguing article about yet another leap within
the
> > 'genetics-explotion'
> > Organization:
> >
> > http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200510/s1491698.htm
>
> Quote from the above:-
> The HapMap shows SNPs are grouped in neighbourhoods, or haplotypes,
and are
> usually inherited as blocks of information.
>
> JE:-
> Is Dawkins going to rewrite his infamous book as "The Selfish
Haplotype
> Block"? Are Hamilton et al going to redefine one gene to be one
haplotype
> block? Is gene centric Neo Darwinism going to change to become
haplotype
> block centric? Is the selfishness at the haplotype block level of
selection
> going to be able to force altruism at the Darwinian organism level? Is
all
> genetic epistasis going to be deleted within haplotype block centric
> arguments or is such a proposition just block headed?

If any heritable block bursts onto the scene on which the struggle for
survival goes on;

And if such a block allows (in the phylogeny of fauna) the individual
with this "blocky" phenotypic expression (a blocky expression of this
blocky genophenotype) to become the original ancestor of prolifically
lineage-lengthening successes (such that this is a characteristic of the
human species and very many other species alive today);

And if we like to label this specific blocky genophenotypic trait with
the "gene for altruism" (or with whatever other words);

And if this haplotype block is consistently correlated with "being
helpful" - even with the occasional individual being helpful to such an
extent that it causes this altruistic individual to undergo a
self-inflicted lethal ordeal;

Then why should we not be allowed to call it "a gene for altruism" -
especially when every one that knows something about what is going on at
the level at and above DNA also knows that it contains the recipe that
plays a part, and is put into effect, in a super-complex system of
interactions???

I immediately was attracted to the holistic spirit of your stuck-upness
against
the myopic stupidity of many scientists.

Disappointingly for me, I soon found out that you are fighting, and will
probably never stop battling, on the wrong fronts and for
"not even wrong" ideas.

Only ideas that have or _can_ have some satisfying Explanatory and
Practical (e.g. social or even political) Traction are to me
worth pursuing.

P




.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: New Scientist: The Neanderthal within
    ... in Piscataway, New Jersey, looked at a haplotype within a gene called PDHA1. ... which modern humans derive from a single population," says Garrigan. ... of selection wholly internal to the H. sapiens genome. ...
    (sci.bio.paleontology)
  • Re: Part 1 (of 3): What are major aspects of evolutionary theory?
    ... sure whether there was recent gene flow between them or the same SNP ... But any single haplotype block has *many* different states, ... a set of genes at different loci on the same chromosome that except ... many linkage groups as there are homologous pairs of chromosomes. ...
    (talk.origins)