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Bio 103, Week 10, Genes and Humanity; "Energy" and the Link Between Improbability and Probability
Glad you're here, to share explorations of life. If you're registered in Biology 103, remember to log in before posting here. Others are welcome to contribute without logging in. Such comments though will be checked to avoid spam postings and so be delayed in appearing.
In any case, remember that this isn't a place for polished writing or final words. Its a place for thoughts in progress: questions, ideas you had in class (or afterwords), things you've heard or read or seen that you think others might find interesting. Think of it as a public conversation, a place to put things from your own mind that others might find useful and to find things from others (in our class and elsewhere) that you might find useful. And a place we can always go back to to see what we were thinking before and how our conversations have affected that. Looking forward to seeing where we go, and hoping you are too.
You're free to write about anything that came into your mind this week. But if you need something to get you started, what about "In DNA Era, New Worries About Prejudice" and associated class discussion? And/or the link between things becoming more probable ("falling apart") and other things becoming more improbable (life as "improbable assembly")?
article from Scientific American
Here is the article from Scientific American: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=are-aliens-among-us .
It dicussed what scientists generally qualify as "characteristics of life;" it's what we went over at the beginning of the year.
This article discusses scientists' search for "alien life" that arose seperately from what we commonly accept as life here on Earth. Apparently there has been a long-standing theory that life arose more than once on Earth, perhaps creating a completely different form of life from what exists today. (This might be the key to finding life on planets other than our own). Scientists are now looking in regions where conventional life would not be able to survive, areas where even extremophiles find the conditions a little uncomfortable. The hunt is on for microbes existing with right-handed amino acids and left-handed DNA, exotic amino acids that exist in no present life forms, microbes that use arsenic instead of phophorus, or silicon-based rather than carbon-based microscopic life. Finding any one of these proposed microbes would radically change view of evolution and life as according to science.
It's interesting. And relevant to our conversation about cells, (in 1988, Olavi Kajander at the University of Kuopio in Finland observed ultrasmall particles inside of mammalian cells, as small as 50 nanometers, and proposed that they were living organisms that lived in urine and created kidney stones).
I'm not sure how much credibility his proposal has, but it creates an interesting hypothesis for our view of life.
And now Im reading through
genes and behavior, repetitively?
During dinner this weekend,
During dinner this weekend, I brought up genes and the supposed nature vs nurture controversey. I told my family, based on what we said in class, that genes dont determine anything, but that they do make people more inclined to act or become a certain way. Ok... so in other words, so just because a person has a certain set of genes does not necessarily mean a person will be a certain way because nature and nurture both play a role. But then I was thinking about homosexualiy (or really any trait). Is there a gene for homosexaulity? I guess what Im really asking is are there genes for behaviors? And do these genes determine behaviors? Based on what we discussed, I dont think they do, but Im just a little confused.
Wednesday's discussion has
From black and white to male and female ...
Interesting conversation on Wednesday, following up on this discussion of race and genes, and "sex is actually biological while gender is a societal construct". If by "biological" one actually means "genetic", then perhaps race is BOTH genetic AND socially constructed, ie the two are not oppositional but instead there are genetic differences among individuals which in turn are the grist from which a variety of different social/cultural stories can be created?
And maybe the same holds for sex/gender? The notion of two sexes, for example, is not a "biological" story (there are more than two possible relevant genetic forms, and neither "determines" sex in terms of anatomy or behavior or personal sense of identity); its a cultural one (See Does Biology Have Anything to Contribute to Thinking About Sex and Gender?). So maybe both sex and gender (do we really need two different terms?) are also BOTH "biological" AND socially constructed, with genes (and hormones and ...) being the grist from which a variety of different social/cultural stories can be created?
All of this, in turn, raises some interesting questions about not only broad social/cultural stories but more local ones as well. What exactly do we mean by a "woman's college"?
Woman's v. women's
the meanings of sex and gender
A question also under discussion in another class,
up the hill on the same campus; see Bryn Mawr Boys.
New Article on Stem Cell Research
It's a little off topic, but I thought I would share this:
It's an article that just came out about the recent breakthrough on stem cell research that states that stem cells can be generated without the use of embryos... it raises an interesting ethical issue and has to do with our current theme of genes and the moral issues raised with new breakthroughs like stem cell research and designer babies.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1685965,00.html
Have a great Thanksgiving guys...
Class discussion on friday!
The class discussion was very interesting on friday. Race? Ethnicity? Culture? There is not just "one meaning" of of these three terms. In fact their meanings are some what correlated with each other on a social level. Society connects all of the three terms to eachother, so when asked to define the three one find a relationship of the three in all of thier defintions.
As I mentioned in the class discussion, when the word "race" is used or brought uip in a converstaion I think of the terms 'Black' and "White". I think of it as "black' and "White" because what I've been taught or exposed to in "African American Culture', in AMERICA. Society has provided a clear difference of the two races; growing up reading texts that aklways considered race to be "Black vs. White"....
just some thoughts!
I think it is quite
I am glad that we got a
I found Friday's discussion
We are more closely related than we think
Our discussion in class on
Our discussion in class on Friday was very interesting. Not only did it clear up the "biological" side of race interpretation but it made it clear that the definitions for race, ethnicity, nationality, and many other ways of classification were unclear. What was the most interesting thing was when discussing the article published in the New York Times. Why it was published without any evidence and the fact that a logger was cited seemed to leave me uninterested in the rest of the article.
Another interesting point was made by Wil when he mentioned that a lot of people who claim to know "who they are" often times are wrong in identifying where their roots lie. My parents are from the Caribbean and I would consider myself African American, though my culture, ethnicity, and nationality may all be different. Am I really African American? If so aren't we all since we all came from there at one point in time?
I still wish we could have
I like the notion of
Friday's discussion on race
Friday's discussion on race was very interesting. Firstly, I felt that I learned nothing from the article that we had to read, except that scientists are finding ways to worsen race relations in America. By "genetically proving" that one race is more intelligent than another can only cause trouble for future generations. I am shocked that the NY Times-such a notable periodical source that is read by millions of Americans- would print such an article.
Usually talks about race on this campus are tense but I liked the one on Friday because we got the chance to define what we thought the word "race" actually was. Wil told us an interesting thing, that humans are 99% the same, in respect to DNA, which further proves my previous thinking that race is purely based on one's society and culture and not so much on skin color. One person in our class mentioned that some African Americans and some Indians have the same skin color but they are different culturally which makes them of a different race. This seems like a likely story but I feel that the word "race' could never be sufficiently defined, but stories can be created so that the word/concept can make a little more sense.
I thought the discussion on
should we be allowed to alter our or our childerens genes?
i thought the discussion on friday was a uniqe one..
like what other students said, race and ethnicity is not as clear cut as they are often portrayed to be... i guess this is especially true in the us ( unlke korea, where i am from ) since it is the home country to a very diverse ethnic group..
There seems to be very little difference amongst us in terms of the complexity of race and ethics and that it would be simply silly to classify indiiduals simply based on their genetic information.
but i was just curious what other people think about the possibility altering ones genes? ( for those who have seen it, like the movie gattaca )
Yes it is very true that there are other elements in live ( such as socio economical background, education and etc ) that play a much larger role than genetics in ones development. However ( assuming that we have been able to reach that lavel of maturity in bio science which we clearly are far away from today ) wouldn't it be also true that by altering genetic one can be better suited for certain tasks? ( i mean we are already making genetically engineered crops to make them more resistant to pest right? )
to make the long story short, what do people think about this issue? should this be covered under the right to pursue ones happiness, a fundamental idea of the founding fathers of america?
i would appereciate any comment or feedback regarding this issue
thanks
andy
I see what you mean about
The Sun is falling
As others have posted above, I believe that Friday's class was important in that we started to try to define the differences between race and ethnicity, as I know I have always been confused about the difference. Going back to other conversations that we had in class earlier in the week, in which we talked about how processes are constantly breaking down (becoming probable) and being built back up (improbable), I thought that it made a lot of sense and helped clarify what we were discussing. The idea of the sun as "breaking down" to become a probable assembly makes sense, even if it did seem sort of strange to me at first-I've never thought of the sun as falling apart, even though I know that the sun will eventually burn out in another couple billion years. It's just another way of looking at the importance of the sun to life on earth, and how dependent we are on it.
genes and humanity: "explaining it better"
Sorry to have missed Friday conversation. Here's a letter to the editor I sent to the NY Times about the article that served as background ...
Friday's discussion was very
on genetics and race.
first of all, the relation between genetics and race is unclear especially because race itself is hard to define.
second of all, how does racial superiority even come into play if we are all of the same descent and as we learned in this class, we are all made up of the same things (DNA, atoms) in the bigger/smaller scale of things?
there may be a correlation between race and genetics, in that different races have different clusters of similar genes, but genetics is not the sole determinant of race, neither is it the sole cause of it.
the way i see it, race is a mixture of things: environmental conditions like culture and geography.
and superiority is a matter of an individual's genetics, not a matter of racial genetics.
the article fails to clarify the relationship between genetics and race.
and more importantly, it fails to define what race is.
I agree that the article
What is race? ethnicity? nationality?
DNA as a vehicle for further racial discrimination
This article sparked a lot of interest to me (mainly because we're discussing this in my Anthro 101 class and I wrote my second web paper on this subject) and provided a completely different perspective on how recent genetic evidence is being highly misinterpreted and therefore creating an imaginary link between genetics and racial superiority.
Since many people (both non-scientists, like the blogger in Manhattan that the article wrote about and scientists, like Dr. Watson who made an unwarranted conclusion about Africans and their "genetic inferiority") immediately jump to arbitrary conclusions with little or no scientific evidence, it seems as though through these conclusions, they are legitimizing racial prejudice.
I personally find it quite upsetting and pathetic that such a well-known and Noble Prize winner, Dr. Watson would make these type of comments when he should know better than anyone that although a scientist is someone who is supposed to constantly revise and question current theories, he is supposed to be willing to back up his conclusions with evidence.