Chapter 117 19.6 Turn abstraction into concreteness

In the evolution of genes, the entities to which genes are attached play a somewhat miraculous role.During sexual activity, the two chromosomes are not reunited naked, but are wrapped inside a giant egg cell.This stuffed egg cell has a lot of say in how to recombine genes.The yolk-like cell is filled with various protein factors and hormone-like mediators, and is controlled by its own non-chromosomal DNA.As the chromosomal genes begin to differentiate, the egg cell directs them, controls them, orients them, and orchestrates the baby's build.It is no exaggeration to say that the resulting organism is controlled to a certain extent by the egg cells, not by the genes to completely control the overall situation.The state of the egg cell will be affected by factors such as stress, age, nutritional status and so on. (One idea is that babies of older mothers are more likely to develop Down syndrome because the two chromosomes that control the birth defect have spent so many years together in the mother's egg cells that they become entangled with each other.) Even in Before you're even born—or rather, from the moment of conception—forces other than your genetic information are already shaping you through genetic channels.Genetic information does not exist independently of its material carrier.The skin of a living body is formed under the double action of non-inherited cellular material and inherited genes—physical body and genes co-exist.Evolutionary theory, especially evolutionary genetics, cannot fully understand evolution if it is not familiar with complex biological forms; and artificial evolution can only be popular if it is attached to entities.

Like most nucleated cells, each biological egg cell carries several DNA information banks outside the chromosomes.What bothers the orthodox theory most is the possibility that the egg cell is constantly exchanging coded information between its internal DNA and its chromosomal DNA.If the egg cell's own experience can affect the formation of internal DNA and pass it on to the chromosomal DNA, it violates the strict central dogma of orthodox theory.The law states that, in a biological sense, information can only flow from gene to cell, but not vice versa.That is, there is no direct feedback from the flesh (phenotype) to the genes (genotype).Darwin's critic Arthur Koestler pointed out that we have reason to be skeptical of such a rule as the central dogma because "it would be the only instance in a biological process that does not require feedback".

The body forming process has two references for the founders of artificial evolution: first, the variation of the mature body is indirectly affected by the environment of the mother's egg cell in the embryonic period, and directly affected by the genetic genes.In this process, some unconventional information flows from the cell (the mother cell to be exact) to the gene, possibly through some control element or intracellular DNA exchange.As the German morphologist Rupert Raeder puts it, "Neo-Lamarckism says there is a direct feedback; neo-Darwinism says there is no such feedback. Both are wrong. The truth lies somewhere in between." There is feedback, but it is not direct.” A major link in indirect feedback occurs very early in the embryonic period, within the hours of the genes’ incarnation.

During these hours, the embryo is an amplifier.And here's our second lesson: Small changes are amplified during development.In this way bodily formation skips Darwin's progression.This idea was put forward by Berkeley geneticist Richard Gozschmidt.His views on non-incremental evolution were ridiculed and sneered at throughout his life.His major work—The Material Basis of Evolution (1940)—has been dismissed as nonsense.It wasn't until the 1970s that Steven Jay Gould revived his views and began to preach them vigorously.The title of Gorzschmidt's work coincides with the theme I want to explain: evolution is the process of mixing materials and information, and genetic logic cannot violate the laws of the material world in which it lives. (From this we can infer that artificial evolution differs from natural evolution because it operates on a different substrate.)

Gorzschmidt spent his miserable life proving one thing: Macroevolution (from worms to snakes) cannot be explained by mere generalization of microevolution (from red roses to white roses).By studying the development of insects, he concluded that evolution proceeds in leaps and bounds.Small changes early in development lead to big changes in maturity, giving birth to a monster.Although most extreme mutations die young, there are occasional large changes that blend into the whole, and a certain "promising" monster is born.This promising monster would probably have grown a full pair of wings; Darwinian theory would have required a half-winged intermediate state.Organisms may be able to achieve the final form in one step, and those species of so-called intermediate forms may never appear.The emergence of such promising monsters could also explain why transitional species are not found in fossils.

Gorzschmidt also claims that those "promising" monsters can be easily spawned by making small changes to the spawn timing.He discovered that a certain class of "rate genes" controls the timing of an organism's local growth and differentiation processes.For example, if we fiddle with the genes that control the rate of coloration, we can produce a caterpillar with wildly different color patterns.As his supporter Gould wrote: "Small changes in early embryos, accumulated during growth, can produce enormous differences in adults...if we cannot induce intermittent variation by small changes in the rate of development If not, then the most important evolutionary transition is simply impossible to complete."