Gene genie

Oct
29
2010
by
Lynne McTaggart
/
32
Comments

Lately, I’ve been asking myself a few pretty basic questions:  What on earth is a gene? And, an even bigger question: What on earth is evolution?
In 1953, molecular biologists James Watson and Charles Crick claimed to have unlocked the “secret of life” by unraveling deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), the genetic coding in the nucleus of every cell. Thereafter, scientists came to believe that within the coiled double helix lay every individual’s lifelong blueprint.
Renaissance man
This theory promotes DNA as the Renaissance man of the human body – architect, master builder and central engine room – whose tool for all this amazing activity is a handful of the chemicals that make proteins.
The modern scientific view is that DNA somehow manages to build the body and spearhead all its dynamic activities through a straightforwardly mechanistic process of selectively turning on and off certain genes — the steps on the spiral ladder of the double helix.
These nucleotides make copies of themselves as messenger ribonucleic acid (RNA) molecules, then use this blueprint to choose from an alphabet of amino acids the genetic ‘words’ that create one of the body’s approximately 150,000 specific proteins, which are responsible for the body’s myriad functions.
From the outset, Watson and Crick laid down a set of mechanistic rules they termed the “central dogma” of microbiology, which maintained that cellular informational commands flowed in a single direction, from DNA to RNA to a selected combination of amino acids to the assemblage of proteins.
Until recently, scientists maintained that gene activity is a hermetic process and DNA the central and only dictator.
Smart bacteria
In fact the latest evidence suggests that information flow between DNA and both inside and outside the body is highly dynamic — as geneticist John Cairns of Harvard’s School of Public Health learned in the mid-1980s.  Cairns carried out an experiment that would set off one of the largest arguments in modern biology.
He’d selected bacteria with a genetic defect rendering them unable to digest lactose, the sugar present in milk, then introduced them into a batch of Petri dishes containing cultures whose only food-source was lactose. Without any digestible food, the bacteria faced death by slow starvation.
According to orthodox science, the bacteria would not be able to colonize; without a food source to drive metabolic processes, they could not carry out normal reproduction.  Nevertheless, in every Petri dish, Cairns found a goodly number of thriving colonies.
When Cairns tested for genetic changes in his colonies, he found that a single type of gene had changed – those preventing for lactose metabolism. Identical changes in just those genes had occurred within every new colony in every Petri dish.
Through some unknown mechanism, the bacteria had activated life-saving mutations in direct response to an extreme environmental crisis, and these mutations had saved their lives.
Somehow the extreme environmental conditions had caused changes in genes, enabling the bacteria to digest the only food available to them. 
The bacteria had evolved purposefully, not randomly, in order to restore balance and harmony with their environment.
Directed mutation
In 1988, Cairns published his findings in the prestigious journal Nature under the droll title ‘The Origin of Mutants,’ an irreverent nod to Charles Darwin.
Darwin had proposed that the evolution of species occurs randomly through copying errors in inherited characteristics, but that only those changes most conducive to survival prevailed.
Cairns instead proposed that cells within organisms have the ability to orchestrate their own ‘directed mutation,’ rapidly adapting to a changing environment.
American journal Science dismissed Cairns’ work as tantamount to heresy, and it took ten years for the first popular science publication to introduce his material to the public. 
As other researchers looked closer, they discovered that Cairns was right. Under environmental stress, a special enzyme in a bacterium cell gets activated, initiating a fevered copying process of cell DNA with a deliberate array of random mistakes like a photocopier run amuck — a mechanism now referred to as ‘somatic hypermutation.’ 
If any one of these mutated genes happens to be able to assemble a protein with the key to overcoming the environmental problem, the unthinkable occurs:  the bacterium excises and jettisons the original problem gene from its DNA, and then replaces it with the new gene. 
This is the likely process by which bacteria manage to outwit antibiotics. 
Restructuring your genes
Other scientists after Cairns have begun to show that the environment is constantly changing an organism, not simply through epigenetics – the study of factors above the gene that turn it on or off — but directly by changing genes.   
They’ve discovered a host of biochemical systems that restructure DNA.  The information flow to and from DNA is interactive, occurring in two directions from other parts of the body and even from the outside.
James Shapiro, a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Chicago, studies the means by which organisms can actively restructure their own genetic information. 
Genes change, says Shapiro, as a consequent of ‘natural genetic engineering,’ not from accidents — but a constant dynamic process of adaptation between an organism and its environment.
‘Today we know that biological molecules change their structures as they interact with other molecules,’ he says, ‘and these structural changes contain information about the external environment and conditions within the cells.’
Shapiro likes to refer to the genome as a ‘read-write memory system,’ rather than blueprint, that gets modified by a host of influences – internal and external.
Symbiotic partnership
All of this suggests something enormous. Modern evolutionary synthesis emphasizes that your future is a genetic crap shoot — a case of good or bad genes. 
Presently we are discovering that the natural world is created as a dynamic, symbiotic partnership, and evolutionary change, in a sense, is prompted by a joint solution, restoring balance and harmony when an organism is out of alignment with its environment.
So the big question is not simply how we humans are going to amend the havoc we’ve wreaked upon the earth. 
The question is how are all these planetary crises of late  — global warming, increased natural disasters and ecological crises — going to adapt us so that we may continue to live here and at last in harmony with all these changed surroundings?

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Lynne McTaggart

Lynne McTaggart is an award-winning journalist and the author of seven books, including the worldwide international bestsellers The Power of Eight, The Field, The Intention Experiment and The Bond, all considered seminal books of the New Science and now translated into some 30 languages.

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32 comments on “Gene genie”

  1. Thank you so much Lynn explaining this with such insightful clarity. I salute you (yet again!) It seems that Science is slowly starting to prove that LIFE is intelligent and creative, not mechanistic. The fact that we are part of this magnificent sytem offers hope for our own renewal as well as all the LIFE we humans have tampered with for so long. Life is infinite - as we are!
    love to all
    lyn

  2. Thank you for this blog - it is clearly explained and familiar to me through Bruce Lipton who has been giving talks and writing papers and a book about this for some years. He also goes in to the detail of the science behind it.
    The fact is that the symbiotic nature of the world and the balance of it is being seriously disrupted by the Bigpharma and oil mogul profit mongering, with the bankers pulling the strings... well that's an enormous simplification however the point is that the environment and signals from it affect human (and all life) behaviour.
    Far from the central dogma which makes us victims to our inherited genes, Bruce Lipton has explained lucidly and in detail exactly how the environment affects us through what we believe. So if you believe the hype about global warming (many credible scientists are opposed to the press-perceived wisdom) and natural disasters - then how are you and I personally going to adapt to that?
    Also a point about your final question 'They' are not going to adapt 'us' - the case is that we are going to have to adapt ourselves each and every one of us - by literally changing our beliefs.
    Starting with? 'we need the banking system' and 'we need big pharma health care' and that 'we need GMO' and that we need to be very afraid so that we can be looked after by the authorities and experts'.
    As for harmony here is a belief that you have covered beautifully in former blogs - do we need to compete ? Do we need to accept war ? Do we need to remain addicted to whatever elixir we believe we are addicted to?
    Bruce's videos 'The Biology of Perception' and the 'Biology of Belief' are dynamite. The talk he gave to Google some years ago was video'd and is a fundamental belief blower called 'Where Mind and Matter Meet'. The second half is totally fresh and wild.
    Where are all the 'change makers' now? Fact is change makers R US
    Jackie Mackay
    PS - All these are available on youTube and the talk he gave to Google on Google Video - warning you may have to re-watch because most of us are unwilling to have our beliefs uprooted to the extent it requires - to even HEAR what's being said. In other words - good luck. Bruce is a good teacher though so many are now hearing outside the normal structure of good news and bad news - in fact way beyond.
    Your point Lynne about all of us living in harmony is hardly a utopian dream any more.
    Again thank you for this important blog.

  3. There seems to be yet another layer that has not as of yet been unravelled.
    What makes the genes change? Is it matter or non-matter.
    Is it consciousness changing matter, or matter changing matter - to change consciousness?
    Is it one or the other, or is it both?

  4. Yep. And this occurs during sexual LOVE. Our evolution, it seems, is not from spreading seed with fixed genes, but from expressing or positively mutating either known genes or smething from the 3 billion base pair ("junk DNA") that we don't know about. All it takes is an attitude of love!
    Art

  5. Thank you for the great explanation of what I believe is happening to our children. I work with children, helping to resolve deep emotional issues and trauma reactions. Over the last 2-3 generations I've noticed children becoming able to adapt in a way that seems to be making them almost overly mature even at the ages of 10-12 years. The youth culture is reminisent of the culture described in the Lord of the Flies. They have adapted to physical, psychological and emotional cruelty on a scale few adults, even today, can grasp. They are now living in a lock-down situation...unsafe anywhere, yet still thriving. Their world involves being forced onto psychiatric drugs to keep them quiet and able to withstand the rigors of a failed and abusive school system, indifferent, neglectful and abusive parents and teachers, daily bullying and exposure to sex they have no hope of understanding. Despite this, many, including those directly affected, are thriving and becoming stronger individuals and definitely less and less interested in the status quo (respecting society). More and more children are capable of serious crime, murder, theft and the various forms of violence.
    Moreover, I believe we have an entire generation who now views early sex (as young as 8 years old) as a natural part of being a child. I've seen many girls as young as 8 with breasts and a regular sex life with several boys at one time.
    Certainly when working with these children, I can see the signs of a clear adaptation of an entire generation of humans to an increasingly violent, debased society. And they are thriving...thriving in those areas of life many of the older generation find deplorable... pornography, drug use, criminal activity, violence, etc. I think there is no way that we will ever find our way back to days when children were seen as innocents and protected...the changes are well underway. Children themselves no longer see themselves as children, but as beings who are on their own in a big scary world, and they are raising their children with this same view.
    The lives of children were under seige and they are adapting quickly. If they had continued to be just 'children', they could not have survived the holocaust of psychiatric drugs, child sex abuse, internet pornography, child sex slavery and being pushed to technology as a substitute for parenting...so on.

  6. Thanks Lynne! I agree that DNA is in a dynamic relationship with the environment. I've written about "Central Dogma" and the directed mutation experiments in my book, "LifeOS: exploring the system that executes DNA."(at Amazon or free pdf download from http://mamayerba.weebly.com) And of course consciousness is in the loop.

  7. "Going to adapt us?" I don't think so....
    The subconscious is the creative evolver. If humanity would choose to purge all that is negative (guilt/fear,resentment) from there...new Heaven, new Earth. Until that happens mankind will continue to exist in duality.

  8. The living Biosphere of this planet is the power behind the self made throne of mankind and his glorious intellect .
    Adaptation or redundancy feed back into every organism in the web of planetary life . Genes are , indeed , the double strings that make us puppets dance .
    We are quickly becoming a serious threat to all life on Earth . Beware , if in our pride we don`t see the fall that our genes will engineer for us .
    The Web of Life will seek to try and maintain balance for only so long ... then , the blind and self - obsessed human race will find its true nemesis within it genetic code . Banana , worm , or plant , we differ but only a little .
    Thank you Lynn for a fascinating post .
    Geoff .

  9. This blog entry coincides beautifully with last night's webcast of Bruce Lipton. He says"Consciousness Trumps Everything"... for those of us not fully conscious, it's ":Belief". And, this blog entry gives me hope for our future.

  10. Sooner or later, we will have to remember that al of what we perceive as reality is an illusion......

  11. Excellent blog, Lynn, as usual. Your clarity in expressing ideas lifts us, as we are able to understand these important facts. I'm anxiously waiting for your next book, but always thoroughly enjoy your blogs. SA

  12. Amazing, and fascinating, Lynn! Where does this all take us? We humans, have been entrusted to take care of a world which is fast running out of resources.....somewhere along the line, man must come to his/her senses and it all starts with 'me!'

  13. It's a beautiful information since it's explained for a non prepared on biological topics. There's several authors that supports this issue, in fact Francis S. collins release "The God language" book, that propose on a deep sense all this "gene world"... it's a beauty and awsome matter that's deserve all the attention. I should confes that through my Chemical and biological university studies i wasable to believe, to believe in God, in that spiritual and huge universe partially unknoed so far. Greetings!

  14. How can the scientific community not believe in a Supreme Creative Power, even if they don't believe in the old fashioned concept "God?"
    "God" - i.e. a white-haired, white-bearded, white-robed Senior Citizen built like a man, floating in the white clouds.
    Maybe it's because the MDs & PhDs don't want to believe there is anyone or anything smarter than they are.

  15. Maybe this explains the presence of oil-eating bacteria in the Gulf. Possibly a type of bacteria present there that evolved on its own or from direction from our Source.

  16. Lynne,
    Thanks for bringing up the DNA as today's subject...which allows me to suggest you to get deeper into a different DNA research that has been done elsewhere.
    Like in Russia by Dr. Pjtor Garjajev and others, which focused on the so-called "junk" DNA, with amazing results, which can be sumarized as that the software of the human genome in our DNA can be reprogrammed simply by the human voice, WITH THE RIGHT INTENTION, and that the DNA acts also as an antenna and as a storing device, emmiting and receiving and storing a lot of information (actually some say that ALL information, past, present and future is being stored in every cell's DNA).
    Another scientist, Cleve Backster, has proved that our cells and the DNA act as a non-local bodies, meaning that they can share information instantly, without time or space limits, which could help explain why things like distant-healing work.
    Once you start getting into this stuff, you may find out why INTENTION works as it does....

  17. sin = misperception/duality
    healing/forgiveness = corrected perception/pure non-dualism
    Mark, Chapter 2
    "But some of the teachers of religious law (doctors, scientists) who were sitting there THOUGHT to themselves, What is he saying? This is blasphemy! Only God (we) can forgive sins (heal people, understand the Universe)!
    Jesus (GodSon-consciousness) KNEW immediately what they were THINKING, so he asked them, Why do you question this in your hearts? Is it easier to say to the paralyzed man Your sins are forgiven (heal yourself), or Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk (heal yourself)? So I will prove to you that the Son of Man (those who are GodSon-conscious) has the authority on earth to forgive sins (heal themselves and others). Then Jesus turned to the paralyzed man and said, Stand up, pick up your mat, and go home (forgiveness is true healing)!"
    Later, in Chapter 6
    "Then they scoffed, He's just a carpenter, the son of Mary and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon. And his sisters live right here among us. They were deeply offended and refused to believe in him. Then Jesus told them, a prophet is honored everywhere except in his own hometown and among his relatives and his own family. And BECAUSE OF THEIR UNBELIEF, HE COULDN'T DO ANY MIRACLES AMONG THEM except place his hands on a few sick people and heal them. AND HE WAS AMAZED AT THEIR UNBELIEF.
    It's a combination of what you believe and what you think about what you believe. That becomes your faith (personal dogma) and determines what you put your attention on (the field then manifests thoughts into things to become the experience of your life).
    The Son of Man is any one of us who chooses the path to become GodSon-conscious. The teachers of religious law (doctors, scientists), the Pharisees (government/FDA/big pharma), and your family and neighbors (dna, self-identity, ego labels) who THINK they know you the best will be the ones who will believe you the least.
    Go perform miracles anyway!

  18. Lynn,
    Another interesting subject and another eclectic collection of comments!
    I recall learning about a certain species of frogs which could reproduce without mating, and this always amazed me.
    Can there be any doubt that evolution is a smart process? Not just a dumb-luck cut and paste job?
    According to Stuart Clarke, evolution doesn’t stop on the planet Earth. The entire universe is in the process of evolving.
    Stars are being born and galaxies are rotating within a constant flux of evolutionary change.
    It seems impossible that bacteria could fix itself so that it could survive, but these experiments prove otherwise.
    If we relate this to intention, do you think the bacteria intended to change?
    Or is it more an expectation of evolution which can be found throughout nature, but has been lost by humanity due to consciousness?
    Could our consciousness be both a gift and a prison through which we perceive the world?
    The bacteria might have changed without being conscious, but the fact that the disabled DNA was released and replaced with enabled DNA seems to me to show a sense of ‘correctness’ was sensed and applied.
    Is this in itself the result of some form of natural intention?
    The debate goes on...
    Write On!

  19. Situation impossible. Solution just around the corner. BP oil spill dire, then thought enzymes spinning out mutant ideas till solution discovered. Out with the old, in with the new. I'd bet that these days there's more thought about bacteria siding with some peaceful warrior style scientists in throwing some aw pshaws at the Crick and Watson devotees than there is about the Gulf Spill.
    And in that spirit I began to wonder, given the remarkable manner in which some upstart dietetically challenged little bacteriies was able ta down the lactose with nary a burp, what was the lifespan of a bacteria. The top of the pile of Google suggestions was http://www.ehow.com/i... article. My reason for this search was to find out if bacteria were immortal, and, if not, why, given their marvelously heretical resourcefulness, were they not able to avoid the grim reaper in the long(20 minutes to several weeks, it turns out) run. Well, enough about me...no wait, one more cool thing. Of the approximately 2000 species of bacteria so far identified, 99% are helpful, vital in fact, to our ecosystem. That leaves 1% to make us sick. And out of this measly 1%( plus a few other odds and ends like viruses and stuff) the whole huge med-pharma house of cards hasn't come tumbling down yet. Heck it's just a lactose problem. Hmmm?

  20. One more thing. Lynne, I'm excited by your questioning approach on the gene and evolution. The Author--Authority--Dogma sequence needs enzymes. The author P.D. Ouspensky wrote various books of which two are particularly germane to the discussion: "The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution" and Tertium Organum".

  21. What is the lifespan of a bacterium{I'm not a native Latin speaker}, and there's a quotation mark missing in front of Tertium. May the pseudo-grammarian in me give it a rest for Christ's sake, Amen.

  22. Hi thanks for your Gene blog. I have been having a few gene insights myself recently-and I think I know why we have many fewer genes that corn.email if interested also genetacists are doing DNA test that show we have new 'spellings" in our DNA see Ozzie Osbourne. I have long believed that Dyslexics are probably an evolutionary creative step change.

  23. .......also we humans are also a bacterialogical colony with thousands of our bacterialogical live-ins keeping us alive .....one of the true dangers of our modern world is seeing bacteria as enemies.....
    perhaps when I do amazing energy work that makes symptoms go away I actually re tune peoples genes !( I call it Field Work)
    its as good a theory as any !thanks lynne i love your book 'the Field'

  24. I can't resist. Have you asked Rupert Sheldrake if morphogenesis plays in to mutant copying and if the solution arrived at in one petri dish could be transmitted to other challenged bacterial cultures? Or "Bacteria who know when their hosts are thinking Emoto style thoughts at them?" Could regs cohere at points of novel breakthrough nodes?

  25. And oops, it was Ouspensky's "A New Model of the Universe" that explores novel notions of evolution.

  26. Evolution is not something we do so much as it is something we allow. Therefore, your question is right on target.

  27. Thank you Lynne! I can feel my DNA changing as I write, perhaps aligned by the morphogenetic fields created by my feelings of love and gratitude. 3 years ago as a genetics student studying the central dogma, I would have thought it crazy, but life has its ways of changing prespectives and you've been so helpful in that respect!

  28. punch in DNA NASA in google search--
    and you will find my blog --it is the 3rd item among about 15 million, --on the first page.
    it is titled DNA NASA ARSENIC PHOSPHOROUS-- capt ajit vadakayil
    i am a bit surprised that google gives space to quantum science!
    hail google!
    i am also grateful to google for celebrating the birthday of Nikola Tesla as " world science for peace day ".
    Nikola Tesla was the first user of THE FIELD --or akasha , as explained to him by the great Indian mystic Vivekananda.
    CAPT AJIT VADAKAYIL
    ..

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