How much are we genetically pre-programmed

gravenewworld

fSure:

http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/news/2004/10/65252

We're essentially a bacteria hybrid, and our cells are outnumbered by alien cells.

Also check out this article that says were really 'super organisms':

http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v2...s/nbt1015.html

Example of gene transfer between alien organisms and eukaryotes:


http://www.sciencemag.org/content/29.../1903.abstract

http://www.the-scientist.com/news/di...#ixzz1YEkWvHov

Now people are studying the effect of gut bacteria health and its relation to brain diseases like Parkinson's and brain development. Really strange, but quite fascinating.


http://www.pnas.org/content/early/20...29108.full.pdf


Hardly anyone knows what the overall function of the bacteriome does, what the effect of gene transfer is, or how the bacterial-human symbiotic relationship can modulate development.

Drakkith

Interesting. I wonder how much of our body weight/biomass comes from these bacteria.

Pythagorean

Psychoneuroimmunology. They've actually started to find personalities typically associated with certain gut bacteria types. Three types this journal claims:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...ture09944.html

Other relationships between personality and gut bacteria:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...D4FC018.d01t03

Maybe... the bugs are my co-pilots

Ygggdrasil

There are about 10 times as many bacterial cells in our body as human cells. However, because bacterial cells are about 10 times smaller than human cells (and because mass scales with length^3), the bacterial cells are ~1,000 times less massive than human cells. Thus, bacteria compose only about 1% of our total body mass.

Simon Bridge

I'd take it to mean that organisms tend to act in certain ways because of their circumstances - among these circumstances are the ways the organism has been built (and lovely red uniforms ;) )

Ryan_m_b is saying that the analogy in which the DNA is a blueprint for the building process is flawed in that "blueprint" is too strong a word to describe what happens. The trouble when we try to be succinct (like above) is that the resulting statement ends up echoing Popeye.

This sort of topic has come up before...
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=4055510
... in this case restricted to appearances and twins.

Drakkith

Got it.

Adrian07

Interesting. Post 14 sounds like pure chemical reaction but is still talking about physical processes which is not what I talking about.
A computer without a programme is an ornament.
A zebra without a programme is dead, it would just sit on the ground after birth without attempting to walk untill a hungry lion passed by.
I keep coming back to birds but it is the most obvious example, use of particular materials is not taught if its not taught then there must be a reason why a particular species builds a nest in a particular way to the extent where you do not have to see the bird to know what species built the nest. Every nest is the same this suggests pre-programming, all birds working to the same set of instructions and those instructions are about how to build a nest in a certain way, no variation whatsoever. How can this be due to environmental factors.

Ryan_m_b

It's not down to the genes really. The interplay of genes and the environment creates emergent constructs (tissues, organs, organisms etc) which, dependent on the enironmet, exhibit certain behaviours. It's not really a case of referring to some computer code.

This is an annoyingly hard concept to describe it seems; I'd love to see someone come up with a good way to describe this to laymen because this comes up very often.

Simon Bridge

Complex behavior does not imply a program, or even a computer.
People used to build very sophisticated mechanical automata before computers were invented... if we can do it, why not Nature?

In Conway's Game of Life there is any amount of complex behavior, including self-replicating Turing-complete computers. Nowhere in the glider will you find instructions to tell it to go diagonally across the board - or how to react when it encounters other "life". It is following it's construction and the rules of the game.

In that game, the bahavior of something like a glider is entirely and directly due to the laws of physics of the automata ... IRL we prefer to distinguish "environment" from "self" for organisms. Nobody is saying that bahvior and construction are entirely and solely environmental ... just that the role of DNA is more mindless and subtle than suggested by the idea that it is a blueprint of a program.

In the end, though, you just have to see it happen in Nature lots of times to get it.

Ygggdrasil

You keep asserting that nest building by birds is an instinctual skill, but this may not be true:

"Individual birds varied their technique from one nest to the next and there were instances of birds building nests from left to right as well as from right to left.

As birds gained more experience, they dropped blades of grass less often.

"If birds built their nests according to a genetic template, you would expect all birds to build their nests the same way each time. However, this was not the case," added Dr Walsh."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-15053754
cited study: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2011.06.011

Indeed, evidence that birds instinctually know how to build nests is not so strong and seems to suggest an important role for experience-dependent learning:

"The classic method of demonstrating that there is a learned component to a behaviour has been the ‘deprivation experiment’: does an animal deprived of an experience while growing up nevertheless perform the behaviour perfectly the first time it has the opportunity? Amazingly, such an experiment was apparently carried out by the English naturalist John Ray in the 17th century, since he writes of birds building their nests: “and this they do though they never saw nor could see any nest made, that is though taken from the nest and brought up by hand”. The next such study did not take place until the 1960s when deprivation experiments carried out on village weavers (Ploceus cucullatus) showed that effective weaving of the grass strands that make up the nest depended substantially upon building experience. In the subsequent years, virtually no further work has been done to establish the extent and nature of the learning processes involved in the nest building of this or any other species.

In spite of the number and ubiquity of birds' nests, we know little of the cognitive processes that might be involved in their construction (Figure 2). Although there is enough similarity in nest design for a nest collector to recognise which species built a nest, we do not know how a bird knows what nest shape/size to build."

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2008.01.020

As others in the thread have suggested, nest building might emerge from a simple set repetitive behaviors:

"The simplest possibility is that the bird has no concept of what it is aiming to produce but has a set of rules for its behaviour, which if followed in appropriate order lead to the emergence of a nest."

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2008.01.020

nitsuj

"How much are we genetically pre-programmed?" Simply asked like that I'd say at least 100% "pre-programmed".

Don't forget what is involved with learned behavior.

A mocking bird is genetically "pre-programmed" to mimic bird calls. It's learning isn't? I guess "pre-programed" to learn (mimic, what's the diff) in other words.

Emotive responses are "pre-programed" and imo govern external behaviors. Such as ants that are "born to" defend, build, scavenge ect.

Or a bird that favors a particular style of nest.

There is no genetic coding that implants the concept of a nest, raw materials ect.

So imo this scale you are vague about is related to social/communication abilities, and that's genetic as well. This is why I answered we are 100% pre-programed.

So I guess I am asking what do you mean by learned & genetically "pre-programmed"? I don't see a definitive dichotomy there.

Adrian07

"The simplest possibility is that the bird has no concept of what it is aiming to produce but has a set of rules for its behaviour, which if followed in appropriate order lead to the emergence of a nest."
It is where that set of rules comes from that I am talking about and I can see no source other than its DNA constructing a part of the brain with a built in set of instructions that cannot be changed, the same way we build pre-programmed micro-chips. Those rules must include instructions about the environment.

A bird does not favour a particular style of nest.
From what I have seen a bird has no choice in the size/style or materials used in building its nest. These things are not learnt so where do the instructions come from. I suspect a bird will learn to hide the nest better, may learn to build it better and faster, learn that certain types of vegetation offer better protection but these are learnt environmental factors and just improving pre-set behaviour.

Simon Bridge

You cannot think of some other way to do it, therefore that must be how it is done?

If the rules came from the DNA as a computer program, then then the program has to be executed via a set of rules: where did those rules come from? The DNA must encode the program according to a set of rules. Where did the DNA get it's rules from? This path leads to an infinite regression.

I'm saying that the "rules for building a nest" are emergent from a much simpler set governing the entire behavior of the organism. Did you look at cellular automata yet?

Biology has to obey simpler rules than computers do.

Ryan_m_b

You really need to get these computer analogies out of your head, they are very detrimental to your understanding. DNA does not contain rules for how to build a brain. You can go and look this up and you will not find a set of genes that say "put this neuron here [here's how to build it] then this one here and wire them like so". It's all emergent as Simon has been trying to say. A good example of this is the establishment of the posterior/anterior and dorsal/ventral axes



I suggest you look into purchasing an introductory book on developmental biology, perhaps Principles of Developmental Biology or just the latest issue of Developmental Biology (I have an older issue around here somewhere but can't find it atm). Alternatively this one is written by a very eminent scientist within the field and is meant to be concise and accessible to the layman.

marty1

Don't overlook the grandest pre-program of all. The program that can program.

Drakkith

What?

Pythagorean

marty1, "Program" as its used in cellular biology processes should really not be confused with human programming. It's really not comparable.