National Geographic Migration Study Rouses Indigenous Concern

September 22, 2005 9:03 AM

National Geographic Migration Study Rouses Indigenous Concern.What do indigenous DNA donors have to gain from their involvement in the Genographic Project? As a First Worlder, I signed up, I swabbed, my genes are being shuttled through the Genographic study as we speak. Can't wait to see the results. And I'm not particularly paranoid, obviously, that the results will be used to harm anyone. But this article did make me curious as to exactly how the study could possibly benefit indigenous peoples. Will it be yet another strike against their origin stories? Will it be like a coke bottle dropping from the sky? Will it, instead, inspire non-indigenous peoples to treat their indigenous cousins with more respect?
posted by CrunchyGods (46 comments total)

"They cannot come up with any tangible benefits for the indigenous community"

So? Why is that, in the context of idigenous peoples, supposedly a serious objection? So, I demand that scientists stop using me or resources in any way connected with me to further any goals that don't directly benefit me? That's a powerful moral argument?

But, hey, I'm no cultural relativist so, whatever. Cultural rights are like individual rights in that they should be protected and respected but they inevitably come into conflict and you're in a fantasyland if you think that it's possible to do right by everyone, all the time.

And I find I'm deeply unsympathetic to the worries about offending someone's cultural mythology, particularly origin mythology.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 9:17 AM on September 22, 2005

I'm always in favor of debunking origin mythologies. faith is faith, but if we can lessen the gap between 'us' and 'them' in order to see that it's really just 'us' on this blue ball, the world can't help but be a better place.
posted by NationalKato at 9:23 AM on September 22, 2005

More importantly, Harry says, the Genographic Project—like HGDP before it—failed to engage indigenous peoples in the structuring of the research. "The project is centered around indigenous peoples and they would have to be involved in posing the questions of the research itself," Harry said. "There have been no such consultations. It is simply scientific arrogance."

This statement just rubs me the wrong way. How is it "scientific arrogance" if you're studying DNA? Its like saying bus drivers suffer from "bus driver arrogance" if they drive a bus. Maybe I just don't have a bead on her reasoning. I know they have to look after their best interests as an organization but for chrissakes, let the scientists do their thing. If anything, I could see her organization's involvement as a hinderance more than a help.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 9:24 AM on September 22, 2005

I know that when I was in Australia there were disputes regarding excavating certain historical sites where there were believed to be 40,000 to 60,000 year old skeletons. The indigenous population claimed that it was a matter of cultural respect, but the government claimed that they were only raising a stink because they were concerned about their land rights. I don't know all the details, obviously, but the idea was that these skeletons would have led researchers to ascertain that the people found in the soil 60,000 years ago were actually of a different race/ethnicity, and therefore had reached Australia a different way, than the current aboriginals. Which would of course jeopardize their right to the land, which they had claimed to have occupied for 20,000 years or something (and also their claim that they were created in Australia). Of course, from that point arguments get very muddled indeed, speaking about origin myths and how populations change over 20 or 40 thousands years, and all that stuff.

So, in sum, I think that often this stuff has to do with land rights. I could be wrong.
posted by billysumday at 9:29 AM on September 22, 2005

Oooh, how cruel those scientists are, with their dreaded "bio-colonialism", their wanting to know more about small overlooked indigenous groups, their wanting to pursue knowledge for knowledge's sake and make all their research public, rather than enriching any one group and keeping it private.

(And what would have been these native groups' response if a giant project like the Genographic Project had purposely excluded these groups from their research?)
posted by Asparagirl at 9:29 AM on September 22, 2005

Well, it could perhaps aid in understanding diseases and genetic disorders they may suffer from. Maybe just the understanding of who and where their ancestors were is enough?

*sips coffee*

Or, a gene imparting resistance could be discovered among their population. Suddenly, their genomes could become inestimably valuable, and the families with the gene an elite class ruling by the need the outside world has for their blood. Long records of marriages and births would be needed to keep the purebloods pure. Over time, though, as it became clear that the proteins coded by the gene could not be synthesized, the families themselves become walking factories. Rich and revered, but human factories nontheless.

How are the rights of an individual to live a free life, to walk where they will and spill their blood as they may, to be balanced with the needs of an entire species to prevent disease? Soon, pharmaceutical hunter robots are stalking the Third World, searching for renegades who have not reported to their local blood-harvesting center. At birth, naked squalling infants must be held up to the unblinking eye of the blood-monitor, their little chubby fingers pricked to determine if they carry The Gene. Every cut is a crime, as the hopes of a thousand First Worlders drains into the dust with the blood of a Maori cutting vegetables.

The New Savior will come, the Freeblood Revolution. Seated at a table with his generals after thir freedom has been won, he may truly say to the gathered needy masses of the world anxious for the ruby elixir that keeps them alive and terrified he will keep it from them: "take this, and drink of it; for it is my blood."
posted by freebird at 9:32 AM on September 22, 2005

great, freebird, now i can't sleep after reading NG.
posted by NationalKato at 9:38 AM on September 22, 2005

How much acid do you normally take with your coffee?
posted by adamvasco at 9:40 AM on September 22, 2005

billysumday- my thinking, too.

The project is interesting, but it's not hard to imagine real estate interests using the results to try and push tribes off their land. Shoddier pretenses have been used to remove Native Americans from their lands or gain access to the resources on their lands.
posted by cog_nate at 9:41 AM on September 22, 2005

I just thinks its funny seeing the name "freebird" attached to such a cool diatribe. I did indeed, laugh out loud (thats LOL to you more internet-savvy folks).
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 9:43 AM on September 22, 2005

Has anyone received their results yet? I've been waiting a long time (over 6 months I think). The website says somthing about my test needing extra work. I just think they are overloaded and underfunded.
posted by stbalbach at 9:46 AM on September 22, 2005

So, people are upset because scientific evidence is in conflict with their creation and origin myths?
Sounds familiar...
posted by rocket88 at 9:46 AM on September 22, 2005

Eh, you can't blame people who have been burned by participating in these kinds of projects before for being ambivalent. Its not like scientists have ever, you know, spoken to South American medicine men about traditional cures, synthesized the active ingredients and ever copyrighted them. Never happened.



And the head of the International Peoples Council on Biocolonialism (dude, biocolonialism?! wtf?) is named Debbie Harry. Heh heh heh.
posted by huskerdont at 9:54 AM on September 22, 2005

But this article did make me curious as to exactly how the study could possibly benefit indigenous peoples.

What's the benefit to first worlders? What's the benefit of the Hubble space telescope to Americans?

There is no "tangible" benefit to science beyond knowing what was unknown before. I suppose some of them dislike science, but they are no better then the discovery institute and other anti-science organizations in the US, India, etc. And they can suck it.

The idea that scientific research has to 'benefit' anyone other then through enlightenment is idiotic and dangerous.

(Of course, a lot of research into the human genome has enormous practical benefits, but that is not the primary reason that research has been done)
posted by delmoi at 9:58 AM on September 22, 2005

The New Savior will come, the Freeblood Revolution.

J.D. Shapely lives!
posted by alumshubby at 10:03 AM on September 22, 2005

Or, a gene imparting resistance could be discovered among their population. Suddenly, their genomes could become inestimably valuable, and the families with the gene an elite class ruling by the need the outside world has for their blood. Long records of marriages and births would be needed to keep the purebloods pure. Over time, though, as it became clear that the proteins coded by the gene could not be synthesized, the families themselves become walking factories. Rich and revered, but human factories nontheless....

Woah

A couple of points:

1) you would not need to have 'pure blood' to have the protein, just a single ancestor in your line of ancestors.

2) You wouldn't need to wait for birth to tell if a baby had the gene or not

3) through genetic engineering, the gene could be put into anyone's genome at conception

4) most likely the gene could be put in a chimp or even a plant, allaying the 'human factory' problem.
posted by delmoi at 10:03 AM on September 22, 2005

This is the problem :Hagahai man from Papua New Guinea had his DNA patented by a federal agency of the United States government in 1994. The statement continues "The Amazonian Indigenous peoples were unsuccessful in their struggle to overturn a patent granted to a US researcher for their sacred medicinal plant, the Ayahuasca".
They obviously don't want to be fucked over yet again by first world organisations.
stbalbach - my wife and I both got our results roughly six weeks after I originally posted about this project here in April.
posted by adamvasco at 10:07 AM on September 22, 2005

The problem with the "Indigenous Council on Biocolonialism" or whatever they're called is that they have no legitimacy -- how can they claim to represent all indigenous people everywhere?
posted by footnote at 10:24 AM on September 22, 2005

...for their sacred medicinal plant, the Ayahuasca.

Ayahuasca is an extremely psychotropic root that many believers say causes psychi, connected dream states among those who ingest a tea made from it. Several companies host tours of the Amazonian region which include an ayahuasca ceremony.

So not only has their sacred plant been patented, but their culture and ceremony capitalized upon.
posted by NationalKato at 10:26 AM on September 22, 2005

*that's psychic
posted by NationalKato at 10:26 AM on September 22, 2005

CrunchyGods, did your test results reveal anything interestin/unexpected?

Just curious, thinking of doing it myself.
posted by jsavimbi at 10:35 AM on September 22, 2005

Sheesh, Delmoi, it's just a coffee dream...but:

1) you would not need to have 'pure blood' to have the protein, just a single ancestor in your line of ancestors.

Yes, but this does not suffice to maintain a gene in a bloodline. If the bloodline is of sufficient value, breeding programs and kinship monitoring would surely be required.

2) You wouldn't need to wait for birth to tell if a baby had the gene or not

No, but it's easier and cleaner, especially if you're a Multicorporate Technocracy treating an entire third-world population as your Farm. Plus it's way more dramatic an image, and allows subplots with people trying to hide their babies.

3) through genetic engineering, the gene could be put into anyone's genome at conception

Not neccesarily. The concept of a single "gene" being plopped willy-nilly in the genome of passing species is, like, way old school. There might well be epigenetic factors that preclude the integration of this gene with genomes where it is absent.

4) most likely the gene could be put in a chimp or even a plant, allaying the 'human factory' problem.

See (3). Many complex biomolecules require far more than the gene to be manufactured, and the proper protein folding machinery may not be present in plants. Even chimps have quite a different "soup" inside them than we do (and none of this "99% of the genome is the same" crap), and it's entirely possible that they would not provide the needed enviroment to manufacture The Elixir.

Body Factories and Freeblood Revolutionaries, dammit!
posted by freebird at 10:58 AM on September 22, 2005

Ayahuasca is an extremely psychotropic root that many believers say causes psychi, connected dream states among those who ingest a tea made from it.

A Tea, hrm. I guess freebird can still patent his Ayahuasca coffee :P
posted by delmoi at 11:05 AM on September 22, 2005

Yes, but this does not suffice to maintain a gene in a bloodline. If the bloodline is of sufficient value, breeding programs and kinship monitoring would surely be required.

Um, you're wrong.

Not neccesarily. The concept of a single "gene" being plopped willy-nilly in the genome of passing species is, like, way old school. There might well be epigenetic factors that preclude the integration of this gene with genomes where it is absent.

Old school?! Obviously some genes are more transferable then others, and since we are talking about a hypothetical gene here we can't discuss specifics, but I'm certain that any gene present in a human can be transferred to most other humans, and probably a chimp as well.
posted by delmoi at 11:09 AM on September 22, 2005

See (3). Many complex biomolecules require far more than the gene to be manufactured, and the proper protein folding machinery may not be present in plants. Even chimps have quite a different "soup" inside them than we do (and none of this "99% of the genome is the same" crap), and it's entirely possible that they would not provide the needed enviroment to manufacture The Elixir.

I'm not familiar with the 'folding machinery', but I don't think anyone is, either. But it's mostly irrelevant, all proteins are capable of folding on their own, which is to say their folded state is their lowest energy state, and proteins that have multiple low-energy shapes are selected out of the genome. They simply don't exist in nature.

If you synthesize proteins in a test-tube the will eventually fold into their normal shapes. All that 'folding machinery' does is catalyze a reaction that would take place on its own, it doesn’t need to be that complicated.

The 'soup' inside chimp cells and human cells is almost exactly the same. In fact, the protein synthesis machinery is some of the most highly conserved in all life, because most mutations would be selected out immediately. RNA polymerase, the ribosome, etc is pretty much identical in all eukaryotes.
posted by delmoi at 11:17 AM on September 22, 2005

I almost bought coffee today but that act had no tangible benefit to the indigenous community so I didn't. Oh. Crap this post has no tangible benefit to the... I better stop now.
posted by tkchrist at 11:45 AM on September 22, 2005

but this does not suffice to maintain a gene in a bloodline. If the bloodline is of sufficient value, breeding programs and kinship monitoring would surely be required.

Um, you're wrong.

How so? Have you heard of recessive genes? Mutation? If genes were simply static in a species, evolution itself would break. Wrong about the breeding programs - sure, that's just a goofy storyline. You may have noticed a little hyperbole and invention. Valued bloodlines have been preserved this way throughout history, from the Pharoahs to the Royal Families of nearly every nation - the scientific issue is secondary to the fact that this is what people do, which you seem to disregard.

all proteins are capable of folding on their own

This is not true. Read about "chaperone" proteins. The desired fold is quite often on the other side of an energy barrier, so getting to it requires help from other proteins and/or environmental conditions like heat and chemistry.

RNA polymerase, the ribosome, etc is pretty much identical in all eukaryotes.

Absolutely. But this ignores epigenetic and environmental factors. There are genetic disorders that don't cross species. The above is akin to saying "Since program X and program Y are both written in C++ and compiled with gcc, I should be able to cut and paste code between them and have it always work the same". Except that genomics and proteomics are vastly more complex than computers.

And yes, thinking of a gene as "atomic" is old school. Read about alternate splicing and epigenetic factors. Read about gene complexes. The idea that you can simply tranfer a gene from one genome to another and have it work exactly the same is simply untrue. It's quite possible that it would be that way, but that possibility is not what my little coffee story is about.
posted by freebird at 12:02 PM on September 22, 2005

I'd be going with freebird here, delmoi. A lot of your molecular biology seems to me to be anachronistic or incomplete. That's not meant as an insult, as you clearly know a great deal. But you seem to be blind to your limits.

By the way, it's worth pointing out a distinction that I didn't discover until a few years ago that, unrecognized, causes more than a little confusion in casual conversations about general genetics. Ecologists (like Dawkins), use the word "gene" in an abstract sense, as an evolutionary functional unit mapped to a specific trait. Molecular biologists use the word "gene" in a very specific, technical sense that, a while back, was isomorphic to how the ecologists use it but, more and more, is not. In my case, I came to the discussion, for whatever reason, from the molecular biology side of things and got in several arguments with people that made claims about a "gene" in an ecological evolutionary sense that seemed obviously wrongheaded to me.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 12:12 PM on September 22, 2005

Here are two more reasons why Indigenous People are and should be very skeptical of this:

1) There's a long and very unfortunate history of developed nations conducting horrible experiments on both their own people and on indigenous people in the name of basic research. Names like Tuskegee and Yanomamo come to mind.

2) Furthermore, there's recently been a trend of transnational corporations attempting to copyright indigenous knowledge, such as the medical use of Tumeric and Basmati Rice. I can understand why opening these floodgates could be seen to be a big risk when there's such a one-sided balance of power.

For what it's worth, those indigenous people who were not skeptical of developed nations are by and large gone. Only the skeptics survived.

I absolutely believe that everyone should be skeptical of this program for it's the only way it could possibly work. I find in inexecusable that given such a long and deplorable history of unethical experimentation and outright theft that these scientists didn't try to be accomodating and inclusive from the beginning. I hope this project continues, I see it as having a great potential to be very useful. Yet it needs to be done with a care that doesn't seem to be there yet.
posted by allen.spaulding at 12:48 PM on September 22, 2005

And I find I'm deeply unsympathetic to the worries about offending someone's cultural mythology, particularly origin mythology.
posted by Ethereal Bligh

Not sure being "deeply unsympathetic" is anything to boast about.
I don't want to come across as a potty Polynesian apologist.
But I can certainly muster some armchair sympathy for non-mainstream and very local cultural mythologies being at least threatened by the Genographic Project.
It is at least possible to grasp that beads, masks and some cute animist stories about a big bird flying from one island to another are not entirely uncherished nonsense to those who still claim them as a part of their cultural heritage.

The upthread comment about land rights is a good point.
I can also see a stubborn loyalty to ancient island migration stories which may, or may not, be overturned by the study.
In such circumstances, I can see how it's simply human nature to think twice about signing the equivalent of a cultural release form.
posted by Jody Tresidder at 1:20 PM on September 22, 2005

"Not sure being 'deeply unsympathetic' is anything to boast about."

Well, I'm not sure I was boasting. In fact, that phrasing was probably unnconciously chosen by me to indicate an opposition to "worr[ying] about offending someone's cultural mythology" without enthusiastically endorsing "offending someone's cultural mythology".

Suddenly I'm reminded of the recent MeTa thread where dios, rothko, and bugbread argue about contrarianism. I can be "deeply unsympathetic" to worrying about offending someone's cultural mythology while not being in favor of, or certainly enthusiastic about, offending someone cultural mythology.

I don't have any positive desire to offend. But I deeply have problems with the claim that I should have a positive desire to avoid offense (in this specific context).
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 1:27 PM on September 22, 2005

How so? Have you heard of recessive genes?

I'm not sure but I think only alleles can be recessive. A recessive allele is dependant on the absence of a gene. This magic protein could not be a recessive allele.

. Valued bloodlines have been preserved this way throughout history, from the Pharoahs to the Royal Families of nearly every nation - the scientific issue is secondary to the fact that this is what people do, which you seem to disregard.

Yes, but those programs were actually damaging to genetic makeup of those Families. There is no scientific value in doing something like this

This is not true. Read about "chaperone" proteins. The desired fold is quite often on the other side of an energy barrier, so getting to it requires help from other proteins and/or environmental conditions like heat and chemistry.

Do you have a reference for this? I understand that there are chaperone proteins, but those proteins only speed up the process of correct folding, which might be a slow process on its own. There are know known chaperone proteins that fold things into a higher-energy state (of course, prions do this but those aren’t 'supposed' to be there, they're not coded for by DNA)

Absolutely. But this ignores epigenetic and environmental factors. There are genetic disorders that don't cross species. The above is akin to saying "Since program X and program Y are both written in C++ and compiled with gcc, I should be able to cut and paste code between them and have it always work the same".

Um, if you cut and paste code in the right places, this will work fine. And the whole point of generic engineering is to find those 'right places'.

Read about gene complexes. The idea that you can simply tranfer a gene from one genome to another and have it work exactly the same is simply untrue.

I said they could probably be transferred at least to chimps, and they could almost certainly be transferred to another person.

Now, it could very well be that there is a whole set of genes that are required in order to produce this properly, like if a huge chunk of DNA got duplicated and then started to mutate into this new thing, but I doubt that would have happened in the few thousand years that these people would be removed from the genepool.

Ecologists (like Dawkins), use the word "gene" in an abstract sense, as an evolutionary functional unit mapped to a specific trait. Molecular biologists use the word "gene" in a very specific, technical sense

I'm talking about gene in the microbiological sense, meaning a stretch of DNA that can be spliced into several closely related proteins by alternate splicing of the mRNA, as well as other methods.
posted by delmoi at 2:09 PM on September 22, 2005

I'm always in favor of debunking origin mythologies. faith is faith, but if we can lessen the gap between 'us' and 'them' in order to see that it's really just 'us' on this blue ball, the world can't help but be a better place.

I definitely agree with this in principle, but I'm not sure it applies here... I mean, is it our duty to "bring around" these indigenous people to our way of thinking? If they think they're the original people, unrelated to the exploitative, overpopulated masses outside their little patch of land, why should we drill science into them? The few indigenous people left on this planet certainly have good reason to be wary of the rest of us.

Is science evangelical -- just another form of "westernization"? Is truth more important than culture?
posted by CrunchyGods at 2:47 PM on September 22, 2005

Furthermore, there's recently been a trend of transnational corporations attempting to copyright indigenous knowledge, such as the medical use of Tumeric and Basmati Rice. I can understand why opening these floodgates could be seen to be a big risk when there's such a one-sided balance of power.

Besides generalized opposition to intellectual property (which certainly is not a general position of indigenous people, I think) I have yet to understand why the patenting of "indigenous knowledge" is inherently bad.
posted by footnote at 3:39 PM on September 22, 2005

I understand that there are chaperone proteins, but those proteins only speed up the process of correct folding

Nope. Some protein folds do not occur without help.

There was a great article in Nature a few years back about "channelization" and chaperones, but I can't find it now. However, this article title certainly disproves your claim that all proteins can just do it themselves: "Protein folding in mitochondria requires complex formation with hsp60 and ATP hydrolysis" (link)

The above is akin to saying "Since program X and program Y are both written in C++ and compiled with gcc, I should be able to cut and paste code between them and have it always work the same".

Um, if you cut and paste code in the right places, this will work fine.

Eh? Program much? If I take a chunk of code and plop it in another program, odds are that it won't work. There are some cases where it will, but that's irrelevant to the point that you cannot assume it will work.

Yes, but those programs were actually damaging to genetic makeup of those Families. There is no scientific value in doing something like this

What the hell has that got to do with anything? The point is that this is what people do. Same with your point that sometime you can produce genes in other species - so what? It's certainly not always that way.

I think perhaps you mistook my coffee-inspired flight of fancy for a prediction. But I'm flattered you've put this much thought into the scientific aspects, though I disagree with you.
posted by freebird at 5:02 PM on September 22, 2005

There was a great article in Nature a few years back about "channelization" and chaperones, but I can't find it now. However, this article title certainly disproves your claim that all proteins can just do it themselves: "Protein folding in mitochondria requires complex formation with hsp60 and ATP hydrolysis" (link)

In order to read the article, I'd need to pay for it. The blurb doesn’t say anything about the protein folding into a different configuration without the catalyst. This is according to microbiology of the cell fourth edition, chapter 3 IIRC. Now, maybe the glossed over something, or I'm remembering it wrong, or new research has come out since 2002, but I'm pretty sure they said proteins fold into the same shape with or without chaperones, which only speed up the folding time.

Eh? Program much? If I take a chunk of code and plop it in another program, odds are that it won't work. There are some cases where it will, but that's irrelevant to the point that you cannot assume it will work.

Eh? I'm a professional programmer, and I have a degree in computer science. Did you miss the words "In the right places"? A function written in C++ will work in any other C++ program. It's called code reuse. Yes, if you just copy and paste random chunks, you're not going to get the right result, but I never said anything about taking random chunks, of code or of DNA.

I think perhaps you mistook my coffee-inspired flight of fancy for a prediction. But I'm flattered you've put this much thought into the scientific aspects, though I disagree with you.

I didn't think of it as a prediction, but it was an interesting discussion.
posted by delmoi at 5:57 PM on September 22, 2005

Yes, if you just copy and paste random chunks, you're not going to get the right result, but I never said anything about taking random chunks, of code or of DNA.

No, I know. And it's a pretty weak analogy I'm making to begin with. But my point is valid, I think. The fact that the underlying DNA/RNA/Protein machinery is the same between organisms is (a bit) like having the same compiler on two projects or even OSes. It doesn't mean that every function from one codebase will work the same way in another. There's a lot of higher level dependencies, missing variables, etc. Similarly, the simple DNA->RNA->Protein model and indeed, the Central Dogma, is no longer really considered to explain everything. There are a lot of environmental (in the cellular sense) effects on the process, and other proteins and genes can effect the processing of any given gene complex. So my point is that it's entirely possible that some genes might require a lot of "context" to work. Transferring this much "context" to another genome is questionable - even if it does work, it's not like pasting functions into code - the mere presence of new genes and proteins will almost certainly have a host of unintended consequences. So, while some proteins can be generated in new species, it's not valid to assume they all can.

The blurb doesn’t say anything about the protein folding into a different configuration without the catalyst. [...] I'm pretty sure they said proteins fold into the same shape with or without chaperones.

Well, the title said that the folding "required" the complex formation, which seems pretty to the point. Here's what came up from googling for "chaperone protein folding":

Especially clear evidence for such multi-step chaperoning is provided by test-tube experiments on a protein known as rhodanese. Proper folding of this protein, the experiments show, requires five different chaperone-type proteins acting at two distinct steps in the operation.
- http://www.faseb.org/opar/protfold/molechap.html
(emphasis mine)

There is no doubt that some (most, actually) "genes" require a host of "context" to end up making the right proteins - alternate splicing is controlled by other biomolecules, chaperones are needed for tricky folds, and so forth.

In fact, since you seem interested, there's a lot of fascinating research around this chaperone process. Some proteins appear to act as "capacitors" of evolutionary change - by channelizing the protein folding, they prevent mutations in DNA from being expressed in the phenotype. Then, when environmental conditions trigger them, they stop chaperoning and unleash a flood of phenotypic change, resulting in a sudden explosion of new features. This explains a lot of the puzzles in evolution, like how can incremental selection pressure cross a "low-fitness" region to get to a "high-fitness" peak. This suggests species maintain a fairly stable phenotype until stress triggers a bunch of large changes, some of which make it across "fitness valleys" to other "peaks" in the fitness landscape. The evolutionary theory is pretty hypothetical, but the MolBio side is pretty well-documented. Neat, neat stuff. I'll try and dig up that old copy of Nature - it was largely about HSP-90, a protein thought to maybe play this role (among others), but had some great discussion of the larger theoretical picture.
posted by freebird at 6:34 PM on September 22, 2005

No, I know. And it's a pretty weak analogy I'm making to begin with. But my point is valid, I think. The fact that the underlying DNA/RNA/Protein machinery is the same between organisms is (a bit) like having the same compiler on two projects or even OSes. It doesn't mean that every function from one codebase will work the same way in another.

Well, ultimately it's just an analogy.

Similarly, the simple DNA->RNA->Protein model and indeed, the Central Dogma, is no longer really considered to explain everything. There are a lot of environmental (in the cellular sense) effects on the process, and other proteins and genes can effect the processing of any given gene complex.


Right, I never meant to say that all genes could be copied from organism to organism. If you look back at what I wrote I said it could maybe be copied to a plant, probably to a chimp, and almost certainly to another human.

That said, there could be a gene complex in 'normal' humans that impedes the gene's expression, making it recessive. But, in that case I wouldn't expect such complex evolution in just a few thousand years or so.

And of course I don't mean to imply that genetic engineering is easy or anything.

Some proteins appear to act as "capacitors" of evolutionary change - by channelizing the protein folding, they prevent mutations in DNA from being expressed in the phenotype. Then, when environmental conditions trigger them, they stop chaperoning and unleash a flood of phenotypic change, resulting in a sudden explosion of new features. This explains a lot of the puzzles in evolution, like how can incremental selection pressure cross a "low-fitness" region to get to a "high-fitness" peak.

Interesting. I know stuff like this happens in -- for example -- E.Coli where stress induces quicker, more error prone DNA repair enzymes, which in turn causes more mutation. What's interesting is that Evolution itself is undergoing evolution, so you get changes that not only help the organism as it is survive but also help the organism evolve more efficiently.
posted by delmoi at 6:54 PM on September 22, 2005

Yah! When I realized that organisms had a bunch of built-in machinery largely just for affecting their own evolution, I pretty much saw God. Or not - don't get me started on weak- and strong-darwinism.

Hey, fun discussion! Thanks for actually taking interest in my little coffee-inspired mini-story! Guess we kinda derailed things a bit, but *I* enjoyed where we went - haven't thought much about this stuff for a while.
posted by freebird at 7:04 PM on September 22, 2005

I've enjoyed the conversation, too.

"Similarly, the simple DNA->RNA->Protein model and indeed, the Central Dogma, is no longer really considered to explain everything."

Yeah, this is key, really. It's sort of strange that it took so long to realize the obviousness of epigenetics but this parallels a lot of other scientific advances. As I say in another thread, we've been really good at solving what are in relative terms the easy problems while thinking that they were very, very hard (because, regardless, for us they've been very, very hard) and have had too much confidence in very simple cause and effect relationships between "atomic" structures and our teleologic view of things. We really, really don't want there to be a vast middle territory between first principles and what I'm for convenience's sake calling our teleological view of a "thing". Generally, we've focused our efforts, by a sort of unconscious but inevitable selection process, on the problems where this isn't the case. But we're running out of interesting things where this isn't the case. Almost all interesting things are quite complex.

Freebird, I sort of first saw "God" in complexity, I think. For me, it's very much not the teleology implicit in your epiphany (if I'm interepreting it correctly); indeed, I think of teleology as the ultimate false God of humanity. But I do see a sort of deep felicity in complexity. Maybe beauty, I suppose, and that's God enough for me. I'm pretty sure I don't see nor believe in an ultimate meaning in the universe, but I do believe in elegance and, more to the point, for me this more modern elegance in complexity is just as valid, and even more compelling in its own way, as the older elegance we've found in our epistemologies that have arisen from empiricism. I often think of Einstein's deep sense of an appreciation of elegance in GR and, in a similar but different way, I feel I see that in the general idea of complexity and in many specific examples of complex systems.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 7:41 PM on September 22, 2005

freebird, is this the article: Between genotype and phenotype: protein chaperones and evolvability.?
posted by Gyan at 9:07 PM on September 22, 2005

If so, I can email it to delmoi.
posted by Gyan at 9:08 PM on September 22, 2005

That's not the one I was remembering, Gyan, but it looks perhaps better. There was a Nature with a specific, technical HSP-90 article and one of those one page "neat idea" things Nature does so well. But yours looks like an actual review article, which would be great. In fact, I'd love it if you could send me a copy too! My Nature subscription became an unjustifiable expense a year or two after I withdrew from the field. And an unjustifiable clutter - it's like the NY Review of Books or the New Yorker: I just can never bring myself to throw any away, and they fill the corners of my life past brimming over.

EB - Of late I've been flirting with what I term "strong darwinism", in which there is no progress or real "optimality". This is a very cold and frankly unpleasant view, and the emergence of complexity from nothing is really its only redeeming quality. Like the green of heather against the unremitting grey of Scotland, the dimmest glimpse of any color against the black night of what is in essense a nihilist view of all life and the universe flashes like a beacon of joy and hope.
posted by freebird at 10:43 PM on September 22, 2005

"Of late I've been flirting with what I term "strong darwinism", in which there is no progress or real 'optimality'."

That seems to me to be pretty much the adaptationist view, or at least as much as I understand it having read Williams. It's certainly how I see things.

In fact, I've taken it long for granted that "progress" as an evolutionary concept is self-evidently invalid for anyone who has any serious understanding of evolutionary theory. As I said, I'm deeply suspicious of teleology in general, but in the context of evolution it seems to me to be a very, very misleading idea. Nevertheless, it's very hard to avoid teleological language when talking about evolution and I notice that even the most rigorous who are very definitely not teleological use teleological language.

Long before I read Williams my views on this crystalized. I recall a conversation with someone--a smart, informed fellow--who was adamant about asserting that male nipples must eventually disappear because they are "inefficient" and must be selected against. I had absolutely no success in explaining to him what was immediately intuitively apparent to me, which was that that's just not how evolution actually works...although it's how the popular imagination sees it.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 10:57 PM on September 22, 2005

Interesting discussion. Derail++.
posted by beth at 8:52 AM on September 23, 2005

If this "science," as you call it, disproves my theory that we're all descended from aliens, I am opposed to it.
posted by maxsparber at 9:10 AM on September 23, 2005