Graham Dellaire (popa0206 at PO-Box.McGill.CA) wrote:
: I am always pleasantly surprised
: when I hear statements like, "Lemarck was right!" etc. because it lets
: us know that evolution and heredity is not so easily definable. Lemarck's
: giraffe inspired axiom (and later tested on poor mutilated mice) that an individual
: could adapt to its environment and pass this on to its offspring was later
: proved an actual possibility in some bacteria.
Actually, I'm trying to get a thread going on this in sci.bio.evolution.
I would argue:
1) In most of the cases studied, the work on bacterial
evolution which _seems_ to be adaptive (Lamarckian) is
fully Darwinian (random, undirected mutation + selection).
2) That the distinction between Lamarckian and Darwinian
evolution becomes less distinct in unicellular organisms,
because there is no division between soma and germline.
Keith Robison
Harvard University
Department of Cellular and Developmental Biology
Department of Genetics / HHMI
robison at mito.harvard.edu
