Biology Forum › Genetics › New theory… ?
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- April 21, 2008 at 9:08 pm #9504
rlinsurfParticipantHi–
I’m new to this forum, and not much less to biology. So I hope you’ll forgive my n00bness, especially for the extremely vague nature of this question.
I saw a documentary on PBS about some new genetic theory, which is about a macro realm, or perhaps a layer (?) above DNA, where the theory says, is where most adaptations occur, by chemicals acting on the DNA? Perhaps something like the e-realm or t-realm (I know that’s wrong!)?
Can someone point me in the right direction?
Thanks 🙂
- April 21, 2008 at 11:42 pm #83572jonmoultonParticipant
I didn’t see the documentary, but there is a layer of gene expression regulation that is controlled by RNA, especially by microRNAs (miRNA), and that is a fairly recent discovery. Is that what you are referring to?
- April 22, 2008 at 12:37 am #83573rlinsurfParticipant
Hm. IIRC, it did have something to do with RNA. But there was another name for it. Is there some sort of layer involved? I’m sorry, I wish I could remember more. The thing that astonished me was when they said that in this layer, changes were far more rapid than in DNA, and that some huge number of changes (90%?) were possibly due to this effect. They also had a name for the layer, as I (tried) to remember above.
- April 22, 2008 at 2:56 am #83575DarbyParticipant
There is a whole movement focused on changes in promoters and other gene expression mechanisms in driving evolutionary changes.
- April 22, 2008 at 1:27 pm #83580canalonParticipant
Are you talking about epigenetics?
There are now quite a lot of data showing that besides genes quite a lot of things can be transmitted by other means, for example DNA methylation state, presence of some proteins, regulatory RNA etc… - April 22, 2008 at 4:04 pm #83581DarbyParticipant
This might help –
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008 … s.php#more
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