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Any thoughts on EES?
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lewiscalledhimmaster
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08 October 2014 is the date of the article, perhaps try for something a little more current.
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sfs
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Sure. I read the piece when it first came out. I'm not an evolutionary biologist, but I work on the fringes of the field and I have a decent idea of what's going on in it. I think the "No" authors capture the state of the field pretty well.
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OK. The idea of heritable epigenetics has always been a bit of a mystery to me ... but to be honest I haven't tried that hard. It seemed what they were proposing was very similar to epigenetics, so I was trying to gage: 1) Are they claiming a new mechanism for epigenetics? 2) Are they claiming no good mechanism is known for epigenetics and it needs more study 3) Or, are they talking about something completely different?
I still haven't found an answer to that, but I did find an interesting commentary on the article: The Great Non-Debate on Evolutionary Theory (Nature, Oct 2014) | Stoltzfus Research Group at IBBR
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EES is like a physics undergrad trying to pick up on girls by telling them that he is going to prove Einstein wrong. All the while, he does nothing but rephrase what Einstein has already discovered.
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Epigenetics is a mechanism that alters gene expression by methylating DNA or by wrapping the DNA in histones. It doesn't alter the DNA sequence itself, has limited effects on phenotype, and it has no long term hereditary power.
Mostly, they are trying to rename random mutation so it doesn't sound as random, but is still just as random. They usually do this by ignoring all of the detrimental and neutral mutations caused by their mechanism, or redefining random so that it no longer refers to fitness. As one example, you will see them arguing that mutations are not random because the organism can change the rate at which mutations occur. What they fail to tell the reader is that random refers to fitness, not the rate of mutations.
IOW, it is a lot of smoke and mirrors.
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Well, OK, it would make more sense to me if that were the case, but I thought some biologists were saying otherwise. Are people looking for a mechanism whereby epigenetics would be heritable? For example, this:
http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v15/n4/full/nrg3698.html
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They aren't.
Second sentence in . . .
"A study now reports that experimentally induced differentially methylated regions (DMRs) in Arabidopsis thaliana are stably inherited and act as epigenetic quantitative trait loci (QTLsepi) independently of DNA sequence changes."
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Hmm. I'm just getting more confused. Not that Wikipedia is a great source, but in the opening sentences the entry states, "These alterations may or may not be heritable". Are they referring to something else?
Epigenetics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sure. I saw that it was experimentally induced. But the fact that it worked would be a good clue for the next question: Can this happen in nature?
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Heritable for how long? Do you have a DNA methylation pattern that was handed down to you from 100 generations ago? Nope. These methylation patterns change over 2 or 3 generations, sometimes sooner. They can not drive long term evolution like changes in DNA can. Also, differences between humans and other species, such as chimps, is not due to differences in DNA methylation patterns or histone packaging. It is due to real changes in DNA sequence.
In nature, airplanes can release toilet water and cause that water to fall on a person. This does not mean that airplanes are a good explanation for rainstorms. The same relationship exists for epigenetics and evolution.
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sfs
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Maybe someday somebody will find a case where epigenetic changes do play an evolutionary role. If they do, it will be really cool, and will still not mean that it's an important component of evolution.
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OK. That helps.
Sure. Nor can we presume it is unimportant until the conditions that cause it are better known.
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This is probably the most diplomatic and accurate statement in that article:
"All four phenomena that Laland and colleagues promote are add-ons to the basic processes that produce evolutionary change: natural selection, drift, mutation, recombination and gene flow. None of these additions is essential for evolution, but they can alter the process under certain circumstances. For this reason they are eminently worthy of study."
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The more complex evolution becomes the less likely that it happened at all. Eventually science will need more time for all these complicated changes to successfully occur. Two or three billion years might not be enough.
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A good specific example that we could discuss are the butterflies:
"Plasticity: commodore butterflies emerge with different colours in dry (left) and wet seasons."
At first, you may think that this completely overpowers DNA mutations as the source of variation. But wait just a minute . . . why does DNA methylation cause a change in color? It is due to the DNA sequence that underlies the methylation patterns. If the DNA sequence were different then methylation could not produce a change in color. In the long term, if being able to switch colors in response to moisture is beneficial then the DNA sequence underlying methylation patterns is what is being selected for.
"Plasticity: commodore butterflies emerge with different colours in dry (left) and wet seasons."
At first, you may think that this completely overpowers DNA mutations as the source of variation. But wait just a minute . . . why does DNA methylation cause a change in color? It is due to the DNA sequence that underlies the methylation patterns. If the DNA sequence were different then methylation could not produce a change in color. In the long term, if being able to switch colors in response to moisture is beneficial then the DNA sequence underlying methylation patterns is what is being selected for.
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