A revival for Jean Baptiste Lamarck?

 

Posted by Erik Svensson

The latest issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience has the famous French evolutionary biologist Jean Baptist Lamarck on its cover. This is of course quite an unusal cover for a journal which is rather mechanistically oriented, and the reason is probably an article by Brian K. Dias and Kerry J. Ressler entitled "Parental olfactory experience influences behaviour and neural structure in subsequent generations."  The claim made in this article, as well as implied by the choice of journal cover and in the "News & Views"-article by Moshe Shyf is that Lamarck's old but generally outdated theory of inheritance of aquired characters might be true after all, and the central dogma of molecular biology (that genes influence the phenotype but not vice versa) might be wrong.

Extraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidence, and I think it would be useful to critically discuss this paper at this semester's first lab-meeting, which will take place in "Argumentet" (2nd floor, Ecology Building) on January 14 at 10.30.

Undoubtedly, some rather pompous proponents of a so-called "Extended Evolutionary Synthesis" (EES) will probably welcome this study in their endless battle against the so disliked "Neodarwinian Synthesis", which I personally prefer to call "The Modern Synthesis" and so does population geneticist Jerry Coyne.  

These endless, but often futile calls for "paradigm shifts" and "scientific revolutions" have been heard for many years, but have never been very succesful and appears to me to be more ideologically motivated than grounded in scientific advancements based on new theory or experimental results. A particularly enthusiastic proponent of the ESS, Massimo Piggliucci, has, however, seemed to have given up empirical evolutionary biology and moved on to philosophy instead, perhaps because the anticipated "revolution" did not happen the way he anticipated that it would? 

In any case, Massimo probably enjoys philosophy more than biology (no empirical evidence needed that complicates things) and hopefully he has a lot to think about, given that he has three PhD-exams with him (in genetics, evolutionary biology and philosophy). As you can hear, I am sceptical.

You can hear that I largely agree with Jerry Coyne on the likelihood and validity of a forthcoming "scientific revolution", and I think those who call for this suffer from the so-called BIS - Big Idea Syndrome. Moreover, scientific revolutions do not happen because you want them. To quote Richard Lewontin, Jerry Coynes former PhD-advisor who states critically the following about scientific revolutions:

“The so-called evolutionary synthesis – these are all very vague terms. . . . That’s what I tried to say about Steve Gould is that scientists are always looking to find some theory or idea that they can push as something that nobody else ever thought of because that’s the way they get their prestige. . . .they have an idea which will overturn our whole view of evolution because otherwise they’re just workers in the factory, so to speak. And the factory was designed by Charles Darwin.”

Articles to discuss at lab-meeting (click on links): 

    Dias & Ressler

    Szyf

 

 

Lab-meeting on epigenetic inheritance and evolution

Following the suggestions of Machteld Verzijden and Anna Runemark, I suggest we denote next lab-meeting to discuss epigenetic inheritance and its (possible) evolutionary consequences to epigenetic inheritance. I suggest that we discuss two recent papers, one more theoretical in American Naturalist by Troy Day and Russel Bonduriansky which can be found here, and a review in Nature Reviews Genetics by Danchin et al. which can be found here. I post the Abstract of that paper below.

Please read both these papers, and not in the last minute, as it is a difficult topic, but the more we know in advance, the more enlightened will the discussion be.

Note that next lab-mating will take place in "Argumentet" between 10.00 and 12.00 on Tuesday 6 September 2011. After that, our regular lab-meetings will take place between 10.00 and 12.00 on Thursdays. Fika volunteers are always welcome.

Beyond DNA: integrating inclusive inheritance into an extended theory of evolution
Danchin, E (Danchin, Etienne)1; Charmantier, A (Charmantier, Anne)2; Champagne, FA (Champagne, Frances A.)3; Mesoudi, A (Mesoudi, Alex)4; Pujol, B (Pujol, Benoit)1; Blanchet, S (Blanchet, Simon)1,5
Nature Reviews Genetics 12: 475-486
Abstract: Many biologists are calling for an 'extended evolutionary synthesis' that would 'modernize the modern synthesis' of evolution. Biological information is typically considered as being transmitted across generations by the DNA sequence alone, but accumulating evidence indicates that both genetic and non-genetic inheritance, and the interactions between them, have important effects on evolutionary outcomes. We review the evidence for such effects of epigenetic, ecological and cultural inheritance and parental effects, and outline methods that quantify the relative contributions of genetic and non-genetic heritability to the transmission of phenotypic variation across generations. These issues have implications for diverse areas, from the question of missing heritability in human complex-trait genetics to the basis of major evolutionary transitions.