Genes are not Mendel's units of inheritance

What is it about?

That genes are not the units of inheritance is the conclusion of a reinterpretation of the Long-Term Evolution Experiment (LTEE) which has been running for 30 years and has racked up >70,000 generations of genetically pure E. coli in 12 independent parallel experiments. Three endpoints have been measured periodically, fitness (rate of growth), cell size, and acquired mutations. Fitness in all twelve experiments follows a power law despite diverse sets of mutations being acquired in each experiment, whereas cell size increases independently in each of the 12 experiments. It is expected (according to Fisher’s genetical law of natural selection) that fitness is driven by genetic variation (mutations that provide new variants with modified fitness). Only one in a million such variants is expected to increase fitness, so it is more than surprising that; a) fitness increases, and b) to the same extent in all 12 experiments. We must assume that the LTEE falsifies Fisher’s law, and, that evolution is not driven by genetic variation, and, therefore, that genes are not Mendel’s units of inheritance. Arto Annila has drawn attention to the ‘great regularity’ amongst ‘natural systems’ whereby they follow a power law based upon Maupertuis’ Principle of Least Action, which is synonymous with the 2nd law of thermodynamics. There is nothing special about biological evolution: evolution is a process whereby systems seek a balance in terms of the transfer of free energy between the system and the environment. I explore what evolution should look like in a paper published this year “Evolution in two parts: as seen in a new framework for biology”.

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Why is it important?

In 1910 a decision was made by Danish biologist, Wilhelm Johannsen, which has underpinned biology ever since and given a functional role to the gene. In heredity, that functional role is to carry the cause of the phenotypic features of the parents to their offspring. The problem is, that with the laws of inheritance proposed by Mendel, genes cannot do this naturally. Rather than question Johannsen’s decision, geneticists have “customised” Mendel's laws to make them “explain” experimental results, a trend initiated by British biologist William Bateson in 1909. This has resulted in a large part of genetics, instances where more than one gene is deemed to be involved in a genetic effect (trait), being “faith” and not “empirically” based. A large body of research published since 2006 (39,500), using genome-wide association (GWA) is meaningless.

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