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From: winalski@psw.enet.dec.com (Paul S. Winalski)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Invert Zoo and a reply inherited memory
Keywords: Invertebrate Zoology
Message-ID: <1991May3.162715.21825@hollie.rdg.dec.com>
Date: 3 May 91 16:27:15 GMT
References: <1991May2.181440.14045@athena.mit.edu>
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Reply-To: winalski@psw.enet.dec.com (Paul S. Winalski)
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In article <1991May2.181440.14045@athena.mit.edu>,
cvl@athena.mit.edu (Craig V Lewis) writes:

|>
|>Somebody inquired about inherited mouse memory.  I believe Sci. Am. had an 
|>article some years ago on inherited memory in some low invertebrate (tapeworm
|>or similar) organism (the concept of memory in a species with rudimentory CNS
|>is questionable).

I think you're referring to the studies on RNA memory inheritance in
flatworms.  There was an experiment years back where flatworms were tought
to run a maze.  The educated flatworms were gound up and fed to a group
of flatworms that did not know how to run the maze.  These uneducated
flatworms subsequently made fewer mistakes running the maze than could
be explained by statistical chance.  The conclusion was that RNA in the
educated flatworms encoded the memory of how to run the maze and that this
was incorporated in the memory of the flatworms that ingested this RNA.
This concept of RNA inheritance of memory has been widely adopted by
science fiction authors (e.g., Frank Herber's DUNE books).  I think later
Biological research has invalidated these studies.

--PSW