Newsgroups: sci.bio
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca!mroussel
From: mroussel@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca (Marc Roussel)
Subject: Re: Reconstructing cells from DNA
Message-ID: <1991Apr15.213118.11148@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca>
Organization: Department of Chemistry, University of Toronto
References: <1991Apr13.203239.22379@hollie.rdg.dec.com> <1991Apr14.211248.2072@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca> <1991Apr15.185049.3959@hollie.rdg.dec.com>
Date: Mon, 15 Apr 1991 21:31:18 GMT

In article <1991Apr15.185049.3959@hollie.rdg.dec.com> winalski@psw.enet.dec.com (Paul S. Winalski) writes:
>By "hereditary mechanisms" I meant means of transmitting persistent (i.e.,
>inheritable by future generations) changes to morphogenesis.

     I hate to do this, but with the libraries off limits to me right now I
have no choice but to try to reproduce from memory an example that I heard
several months ago.  The organism in question is called spiralea (I think)
and seems to engage in non-genetic phenotype transmission.  I think
that this organism is multicellular, although it doesn't
reproduce sexually (if that makes a difference to you).  The thing
has some kind of curly tail.  Clockwise tailed parents produce only clockwise
tailed offspring.  By changing the handedness of the tail surgically,
one changes the phenotype of all successive generations of offspring in
the same way that the parent's was changed.  No genetic changes are
involved.  The only thing I remember clearly about this organism is that
B.C. Goodwin has suggested it as an important counterexample to the
genotype --> phenotype paradigm, so clearly I'm not just hallucinating
(unless B.C.G. is also a hallucination...).
     I may be able to dig out a reference if anyone is interested, but I'm
afraid that I can't for the moment do more than that.

				Marc R. Roussel
                                mroussel@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca