document.querySelector('video').playbackRate = 1.2“We are survival machines,
robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules
known as genes.
This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment.”
- Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene-centered_view_of_evolution
At minimum, if you don’t know biology well, read these reviews:
https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/biological-complexity-and-integrative-levels-of-organization-468/
https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/mendelian-genetics-patterns-of-inheritance-and-single-966/
https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/gene-interaction-and-disease-987/
https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/translation-dna-to-mrna-to-protein-393/
https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/what-is-a-gene-colinearity-and-transcription-430/
https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/genetics-of-dog-breeding-434/
https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/reading-a-phylogenetic-tree-the-meaning-of-41956/
https://www.nature.com/scitable/ebooks/cntNm-16553748/contents/
https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/sexual-reproduction-and-the-evolution-of-sex-824/
https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/genetic-mutation-1127/
https://readiab.org/biological-information.html
Read more of this free book if you need/want:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK21128/
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Discussion question
Genes can be thought of as a kind of:
memory for past enviroment, a memory of design space,
a biological programming language, an encoding.
Evolution and development is a process of learning from the
environment.
We can “program” this space with a variety of methods,
direct (genetic engineering and gene therapy) and indirect (directed
selection).
Why is it that direct genetic manipulation seems riskier than directed
selection,
for example of food like apple trees or chickens?
Can you think of different costs and benefits?
Selfish genetic elements:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selfish_genetic_element
Epigenetics as control of development, parental genomic imprinting,
trans-generational inheritance?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genomic_imprinting
To see how this little presentation was made, see:
http://sozi.baierouge.fr/