Evolutionary Epigenetics Review by Simon House, in the book: Handbook of Epigenetics: The New Molecular and Medical Genetics [Hardcover], Editor: Trygve Tollefsbol, Publisher: Academic Press; 1 edition (21 Oct 2010), ISBN-10: 0123757096, ISBN-13: 978-0123757098.
Excerpt: Weismann’s ridiculous “disproof” of acquired characteristics – by cutting off mice-tails for 20 generations to no hereditary effect (despite centuries of docking lambs’ tails, or indeed millennia of human male circumcision)! – led to a widespread view of mutations being purely random, advantages enduring through natural selection. Such a concept of evolution that became inappropriately termed “neo-Darwinism”, many scientists even referring to it mistakenly as “Darwinism”. By the 1930s mathematical coordination of neo-Darwinism with Malthus’s principle of population growth, Mendel’s statistical approach, and human population genetics led to “the Modern Synthesis”.
My comment: It is this “…widespread view of mutations being purely random…” that defies any well-reasoned attempt to convey scientifically supported information to theorists who believe that natural selection is for the cumulative effects of random mutations on phenotypic expression. Their ridiculous theory blinds them to the facts Darwin himself clearly stated.
“Conditions of experience” precede adaptive evolution, which is nutrient-driven and pheromone-controlled. Experience occurs under conditions of nutrient stress associated with the lack of food, or in the presence of food odors. Experience also occurs under conditions of social stress associated with the lack of conspecifics, or in the presence of their pheromones. Thus, natural selection is for stress relief, which occurs via availability of nutrients associated with food odors. Survival of the species results from nutrient-dependent species-specific pheromone-controlled reproduction. The molecular mechanisms for natural selection and for species-specific reproduction have since been detailed in species from microbes to man. There is no scientific evidence that suggests the molecular mechanisms shared across all species are due to random mutations.
James V. Kohl detailedl how quantized energy-dependent microRNA biogenesis links the pheromone-controlled physiology of reproduction to biophysically constrained viral latency and healthy longevity. Links from what organisms eat to the enzyme-dependent metabolism of food also link metabolic networks to microRNA-mediated genetic networks in the context of RNA interference. Drug therapies alter RNA interference by altering cell type differentiation in all cells of all individuals of all species. For comparison, during the past 26 years, Kohl has detailed how the chemistry of protein folding is biophysically constrained at every level of biological organization by conserved molecular mechanisms.
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