Mere generality is not enough

✍ Scribed by Wim J. Steen; Peter B. Sloep

• Book ID: 104638888
• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1988
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 173 KB
• Volume: 3
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0169-3867
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00141003

✦ Synopsis

MERE GENERALITY IS NOT ENOUGH 217 genes, true, but a fragment of a gene is never transmitted. The result of an intragene crossover is a (chance) recombination of the two parental alleles. Anything less or more would (in general) be unviable. It is true that molecular genetics has revealed great complexity in structural genes (exons, introns, insertions and deletions) but the stretches of DNA which form the molecular bases of a given gene do not (in general and in the short term) vary is length. 2 In all contemporary organisms, from bacteria to man, the translation step in the information flow from genotype to phenotype is an enormously complex affair involving three types of RNA and multitudinous enzymes. It is extremely difficult to see how it could be reversed. It is this biochemical 'brute fact' which prevents information proceeding from phenotype to genotype and hence blocks Lamarckian-type evolution.