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From: dubois@uwmacc.UUCP (Paul DuBois)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: The Central Dogma
Message-ID: <901@uwmacc.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 16-Apr-85 11:38:08 EST
Article-I.D.: uwmacc.901
Posted: Tue Apr 16 11:38:08 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 19-Apr-85 00:01:59 EST
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Organization: UW-Madison Primate Center
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>> [Paul DuBois]
>> You had better go look up what the central dogma is.  It's NOT my
>> term.  I didn't make it up.

> [Michael Ward]
> I would love to look this up, if I know what you meant.  Please
> clarify what it is you are asking me to look up.  The meaning
> of the terms, the dogma itself?  If so the dogma of what?

Apologies for being so curt.

The Central Dogma is, in brief:  everything's genetic.  The proposition
is that DNA is the sole repository of biological information and that
the flow of such information is one-way, from the DNA to elsewhere
(usually protein).  (This is probably an oversimplification; maybe
Mike Huybensz or Stanley Friesen will comment.)

Opinion is somewhat divided about the status of the Dogma:

Peter Calow (_Evolutionary Principles_.  Blackie, Glasgow, 1983) says
"the Central Dogma remains inviolate" [p24].  This is in rather
striking contrast to Pierre Grasse' (_Evolution of Living Organisms:
Evidence for a New Theory of Transformation_.  Academic Press, New
York, 1977, pp220-222) treats it with contempt.  He says that the
edifice of the concept was shattered from top to bottom almost as soon
as it was formulated.  (This reaction should not be a surprise:  the
Central Dogma comes from the Synthesis; Grasse' is, like many (most?)
French biologists, a non-Darwinist.)

Yockey maintains that the Dogma is a mathematical property of the
genetic code.  This is based on the observation that the mapping
of information from codon to amino acid *must* be one-way, since the
code is degenerate.  I think it might be said that Yockey's treatment
is intended for a rather more limited domain than that to which I
alluded.  (Hubert P Yockey, "Can the Central Dogma be Derived from
Information Theory?".  J Theoretical Biology, 74, 1978, 149-152.)

My comment was directed to the idea that cultural transmission of
information may provide a non-genetic way of propagating change, and
in that way circumvents the Dogma.  I suppose the question then
becomes, is all behavior genetic?  If it is, then of course the Dogma
remains intact.

-- 
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Paul DuBois	{allegra,ihnp4,seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!dubois        --+--
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Science is Dead.                                                    |