New Genetics Revolution Underway 01/27/2009 Jan 27, 2009 — The genetics of the 1950s was that DNA is the seat of all inheritance, and that genetic information traveled one way: from DNA to protein. That “central dogma” has been changing after decades of further researchers. Theories of epigenetics (inheritance not limited to DNA) have been gaining attention with increasing frequency. Science Daily reported on work by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health that “Heritability May Not Be Limited To DNA.” The European Molecular Biology Laboratory issued a press release shouting, “Rewrite the Textbooks: Transcription is Bidirectional.” And Nature last week (22 Jan 2009 issue) had a special section on RNA interference. Small RNAs play a major role in how genes are expressed, and may play roles in inheritance. One of the papers discussed the interplay of histones and small interfering RNAs (siRNA) in epigenetic inheritance.1 Histone methylation patterns can pass from parent to daughter cell, and “siRNAs act only on those daughter DNA strands that have inherited old parental histone H3 molecules containing H3K9 methylation,” wrote author Danesh Moazed. “Such cooperativity-based mechanisms involving the dual recognition of histone marks and other specificity factors (siRNAs or DNA-binding proteins) are likely to underlie all epigenetic cis-inheritance mechanisms.” Much remains to be discovered in this “Pandora’s Box” of new insights into inheritance, as Angela Eggleston described it in the introductory article. Moazed ended, “Future studies are likely to provide new and surprising insights about the way in which small and large non-coding RNAs regulate chromatin structure and how this ability is, in turn, regulated.” See also the 01/23/2009 entry, bullet 9.
1. Danesh Moazed, “Small RNAs in transcriptional gene silencing and genome defence,” Nature 457, 413-420 (22 January 2009) | doi:10.1038/nature07756.
These studies had nothing of substance to say about evolution. Moazed wrote, for instance, that “With the notable exception of budding yeast, small-RNA-mediated silencing mechanisms and their role in chromatin regulation are conserved throughout eukaryotes, indicating an ancient evolutionary origin.” It indicates no such thing. It indicates the absence of evolution. What is the absence of evolution? Creation! Another paper in the set said this: “These findings have raised many questions about how and why this widespread RNA-mediated regulation of genes evolved...” Maybe it didn’t evolve – why not consider that option? We’ve already seen from the 01/23/2009 entry, bullet 9, that evolutionists are clueless trying to explain these things. Genetics was complex enough to justify the intelligent design movement when the structure of DNA was discovered in 1953, and shown to be a code translated into another code. How much more so today with the mechanisms of inheritance seen to be increasingly complex on entirely new levels.
[2009/01/27] New Genetics Revolution Underway
