Everything you know about genetics is wrong (Adam Rutherford) 148,984 viewsStreamed live on Sep 15, 2015

Everything you know about genetics is wrong (Adam Rutherford) 148,984 viewsStreamed live on Sep 15, 2015 UiO Realfagsbiblioteket 5.79K subscribers A brief history of DNA, the story of genetics and how we're culturally predisposed to misunderstand it. Adam Rutherford is a scientist, author, broadcaster and geek. On radio, he is the presenter of BBC Radio 4 (InSide Science) as well as many documentaries on scientific fraud, inheritance of intelligence, MMR and autism, human evolution, astronomy and art, and the evolution of sex. Being a self-claimed movie geek, he has also been scientific advisor to Björk's movie Biophilia Live, Adam has a PhD in genetics, is a former Editor at the journal Nature, and will give a brief history of DNA, the story of genetics and how we're culturally predisposed to misunderstand it. http://www.ub.uio.no/om/aktuelt/arran... 688 Comments rongmaw lin Add a comment... koczisek koczisek 2 years ago In overall this is a nice and smooth lecture, however frankly, the only new things I learned from it, just because I'm normally not that interested in genetics, is 1st - that human gene pool is surprisingly small - ~20000 genes, and 2nd - that specific genetic inheritance line may terminate by itself after several generations. It actually provoked me to have a look at "human genome" Wiki article (as for today: March 2020) and what I found out is that these ~20000 genes are actually only the protein-coding ones, but the "gene" term encompasses also regulatory RNA sequences and pseudo-genes, thus the gene pool actually grows to about 40-50 thousand, depending on particular database. What I understand then is: 1. considering the speed of genetic science development, this lecture is already old, 2. it's for general public and 3. the protein-coding genes were emphasized to better visualize wrongness of the single trait-gene correspondence concept. That last thing is actually the weakest motif in the lecture, but probably chosen as contributing nicely to the subject: "Everything you know about genetics is wrong". It's early on supported by claims of cultural bias, bad cultural programming and... inbreeding within the House of Habsburg. None of these things I find valid or fortunate, what I'll explain below in points. 1) Charles the 2nd of Spain died in 1700 and the main line of House of Habsburg became extinct in 1740 with the death of Charles the 6th. This was obviously long before anyone knew anything about genetics and ppl just followed the ancient observations of natural trait inheritance. At least, as was explicitly admitted, aside from terrible genetic mess, Charles was able to inherit his characteristic Habsburg Jaw. I hoped that towards the end, this thread will be somehow reconciled with the overall message, but I was wrong. Therefore, it doesn't work well for the lecture and could be entirely spared. 2) I completely don't get some "cultural bias" being the cause for bad genetics knowledge, even if someone isn't really into the science itself. By defining and punishing incest and explicitly discouraging ppl from seeking of, and as of today even ordering/programming "prefect" offspring, good old culture is all for good genetics. By its standards, the Habsburg's conduct could be described as permanent incest. 3) As for bad cultural programming, I started to understand the claim when news headlines appeared. Apparently, just mere fact of existence and activity of a news agency, makes it contribute to the culture - right? WRONG! Most of these agencies, especially of leftist profile, actively and intentionally destroy the culture. To contribute to something, you 1st have to uphold it. In case of culture, it's the subject of values and principles. If you constantly promote adultery, abortion, sexualization of public space, early sexualization of children, even incest, then you're contributing to cultural demise. So, showing some bullsh*t Guardian article isn't again working well for this lecture. BTW: perhaps the terrified liberal adulterer gene is actually a gene of excessive follow-the-herd behavior, which makes ppl follow the mainstream liberal/socialist current? 4) I can't remark anyone claiming lately that a single gene is responsible for a singe trait. Perhaps, the "gene" was once defined that way in phylogenetics, because it was purely observational, but then it's just naming clash between old and new genetics and has nothing to do with culture and everything to do with progress of science. 5) Recapping, if you claim "Everything we know about genetics is wrong" because of bad, biased culture - you're wrong. I'd say, almost everything I know about genetics is true, and still the culture, not science, is guarding good genetics and healthy society. Finally, I have a comment regarding these 2 things I learned: small gene pool size and termination of inheritance lines. If you consider that genome has finite informational capacity and density, it's no surprise that termination happens. After several generations, genes just start being overwritten and fade in genetic noise, so you can't trace them to a particular ancestor. Therefore we shouldn't say that we inherit from everyone, but that we just can't say to whom we owe them. 7 Academiclibrary Academiclibrary 4 months ago Thank you, Dr. Rutherford. This was a wonderful presentation. Meryl Smith Meryl Smith 2 years ago Irrespective of all the rights and wrongs in the title, miss pronounced names etc, as a lay person I found this talk interesting and informative so thanks 15 KipIngram KipIngram 2 years ago Excellent presentation, Adam. Fascinating. 3 jones1351 jones1351 2 years ago 'It ain't what you don't know that gets you in trouble. It's what you know for sure, that just ain't so.' -- Mark Twain The number and impact of debunked tropes that still, effectively, 'rule' the world are tragic. 5 Mark Martens Mark Martens 2 years ago "So, out of this, the greatest scientific endeavor that had yet been attempted the result was basically we didn't understand genetics. We thought we had the rules. Those grand unifying theories. We thought we understood inheritance. We thought we understood Mendelian genetics. And we thought we understood the genetic code." 5 paul paul 2 years ago Great presentation ,, Happy you tried to instill the fact that much about genetics isn't magic ,, a test can't tell you everything claimed or written about, I learned much more than that tho,, I will look for the book. Robert Dennis Robert Dennis 2 years ago I definitely agree that genetics and phenotipical trait inheritance are complicated problems and a healthy skepticism is appropriate. Mark Martens Mark Martens 2 years ago "So, out of this, the greatest scientific endeavour that had yet been attempted, the result was basically we didn't understand genetics. We thought we had the rules, those grand unifying theories. We thought we understood inheritance, we thought we understood mendelian genetics, and we thought we understood the genetic code. And in a sense we did. It's just that humans turned out to be much more complicated than anyone anticipated. Now, what that means is that the way we talk about genetics, at school, in general, in families, is not right. It means that we are fed culturally, we talk about inheritance in particular ways which don't really correspond to what we've discovered as geneticists." 3 Lincoln Karim Lincoln Karim 2 years ago If there is anyone like myself who couldn't make it through 'On the Origin of Species' by Darwin, you may find 'The Origin', by Irving Stone much more readable and enjoyable. Even if it's classified as a novel, there are some enchanting facts and beautifully written passages as he takes you through Darwin's adult life. whisperingsage whisperingsage 2 years ago He needs to do the same thing with Jersey cattle and many wild quail or other birds or other wild animals. Which are inbred. But if you look at the beauty and perfection of the jerseys, which almost died out, they had to inbreed the remainder to gain the breed back. BUT if these animals are properly fed and have adequate minerals and vitamins, they come out just fine. The Sandhill cranes and California Condor went through the same thing. 3 Richard Sleep Richard Sleep 2 years ago (edited) Brilliant, thanks. Having never understood this stuff I'd wondered about some claims, but the argument was always you can't argue with DNA. So much misunderstanding around, so much we don't know. Nice to hear from someone who is really trying to make sense of it. I wonder why so many dislikes for such a brilliant talk, fascinating. John Nicholas John Nicholas 2 years ago I found this to be so interesting. I wish he would have discussed "junk dna". The speaker communicated very well on a very difficult subject. 6 oldspammer oldspammer 2 years ago 32:05 We are not all equal at birth. Intelligence is HUGELY heritable by genetics of your biological mother and father. 2 brindlebriar brindlebriar 2 years ago The proper way to think about what he's describing also just happens to be the proper way to think about how neurons in the brain express thoughts. And that's almost certainly not a coincidence. We once thought that there was a neuron for ever thought or memory, or at last a spot for it; if you were to labotomize that location,t he thought/memory would be gone, etc. But what actually happens is the thought/memory becomes clouded, a bit dimmer, lower resolution. The modern understanding of what's going on is that thoughts are patterns of activated neurons. A specific pattern of activation equates to a specific thought. If you cut of the brain out that is part of that pattern, the pattern, thus, gets less sharp. In nature, patterns of how things work tend to repeat. And here, in biology, we see the same kind of mechanism. There are lots of genes, as there are lots of neurons in the brain. And the phenotypical traits they generate correspond to the pattern, not the individual genes. Thus, for most traits, if you take out one or two of the genes that contribute to it, the trait will become less pronounced, but will not completely go away. Think of it as musical melody; it's quite similar. If you omit one note from a symphony, most people will not even notice. But as you omit or change more and more, it becomes more and more noticeable, until eventually you have a wholly different melody. Melody, thus, is an emergent property, a pattern in the notes, not the notes themselves. The pattern is the thing. Just so, in both consciousness, the pattern in the neurons is the thing, not the neurons themselves. And just so, in biology, the pattern in the genes is the thing, the emergent trait, not the genes themselves. And as for how you can get so many traits from only 21,000 genes, well, if you followed this comment, you see that, that's not impressive at all. After all, think of the number of melodies you can get from just 8 notes. You can make, practically speaking, infinite patterns out of them. In summary: the patterns are the (Melodies/thoughts/expressed traits), and the little bits(notes/neurons/genes) are the substrate which can be arranged into the relevant patterns. Any number of patterns can be created, and most are not useful(just as most patterns of notes are not melodic - they are cacaphony). But natural selection mechanisms and it's derivative mechanisms like human aesthetic preference, weed out all the non-functional patterns. If we define 'functionality' as simply 'the tendency to self-perpetuate,' we can see that it is inevitable, then - more or less tautological - that that which is 'functional' will become more common over time. This is true of music, of thought patterns in humans, of phenotype traits from genes. An important take-away might be that we really should be studying nature(that's what science is) in terms of, and from the perspective of, the patterns that are to be found it it. Not the bits. The patterns are the thing. A tornado is a pattern of air. Air molecules are the bits. And at the smallest levels, those bits are also just patterns. We, too, are patterns of patterns. Arrangements of arrangements. And to understand ourselves, or any of the rest of nature, we must understand the patterns. This is why reductionist science(trying to understand the smallest bits and re-assemble/predict the macroscopic observation based on how the bits work) hit a wall around the 1950s and has barely progressed since. We keep studying the bits, and they don't have much more to tell us, except that they don't have much more to tell us. They were never what was most important. Studying oxygen, nitrogen and Co2 is never going to predict a tornado. They don't do anything; they are just substrate. We should be studying the patterns, how the patterns cause other patterns, and how patterns are made up of other patterns. Patterns of patterns of patterns. A fractal pattern of patterns. Then, science will jump forward again, by leaps and bounds. I suspect we'll re-discover some things that ancient lost civilizations and cultures seem to a have understood. After all, humans naturally look for patterns. Maybe we'll exterminate ourselves. Maybe we'll graduate from physical existence. Or maybe we'll travel around the galaxy in space ships. All I can tell you is that nature/reality is patterns of patterns. It's patterns all the way down and all the way up. And the patterns tend to repeat across what we think of as separate fields, like physics, psychology, biology, aesthetics, etc. Physicists keep trying to find the Unified Field Theory, a 'theory of everything.' But if it's a theory of everything, it wont' be physics. It will also be biology, psychology, and all other fields, even underwater basket weaving. And thus, it is to their extreme credit, that they have actually manged through physics alone, to come eventually to more or less the right conclusion: That reality is just interactiong fields(This is'Field Theory, the basis of all modern understanding of how reality works.) Fields are multi-dimensional topographical patternsf of undulation. And what is the substrate from which these patterns are extant? It appears to be nothingness. In other words, you don't even need a substrate. The patterns emerge out of nothing. All the sub-atomic particles of which everything else is composed, are themselves undulations in the topography of nothingness. So the chicken/egg question of which is more fundamental, the patterns or the particles in which there is a pattern, has been solved. And the answer is the opposite of what everyone expected. The patterns come first; the smallest particles emerge from them. And we still don't want to think in terms of patterns. 13 Merlin Geikie Merlin Geikie 2 years ago Crick was neither a genius nor an idiot. He had great great initiative and perseverance. If that's what primarily makes for genius standard work then so be it. That he didn't really know what dogma meant, is no surprise as he was a specialist. 4 rfvtgbzhn rfvtgbzhn 2 years ago (edited) The Habsburg family didn't completely die out in 1700, only the Spanish branch died out and the male austrian line died out in 1740 with Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor. But there are ancestors of Maria Theresia still live today and they inherited the Austrian Habsburg lands by the pragmatic sanction of 1713 which allowed female heirs. The Habsburg family ruled over the HRE until it was dissolved in 1806 and after that over Austria which was renamed in Austria-Hungary, which they ruled until 1918. 33 Civilization-Hoax Dot Com Civilization-Hoax Dot Com 2 years ago 14:40 best factoid ever. the central dogma of molecular biology is named that because Francis Crick didn't know what dogma meant. William E. Smith William E. Smith 2 years ago Enjoyed this. Good style. Paul Marostica Paul Marostica 2 years ago It has always concerned me that people suggest much of a genetic code is meaningless repeats, or is no longer functional. I suppose that could be correct. But, regarding repeating codes, is it possible the repeats are there because the more repeats there are of a code, the more something is manufactured using that code? The idea here is that, in specific situations at specific times, an organism manufacturing something might be programmed by its repeating code to manufacture not just 1 molecule of it, but some number of molecules of it. And, regarding no longer functional codes, is it possible code seeming to be no longer functional might also serve some other purposes? And 1 other unrelated question I’ve had is, do larger organisms of the same species have more cells, or larger cells, and why? 1 Harold Shull Harold Shull 2 years ago A bit less than half way through the program he discusses intelligence, how it is easily tracked, and directly attributed to the parents. He then mentions how this kind of information is becoming political, and drops the subject. That is an aspect of modern society that needs to be broadly discussed but is politically incorrect. Except in societies where eugenics is accepted, studied, and applied. To narrow that down, the only places where eugenics is not able to be studied are the European based societies. The results of that are being made apparent already. Mark Martens Mark Martens 2 years ago "Reports at the time suggested that it would be a matter of months before we had established the cause of every genetic disease and possibly cured many of them. That was said in July 2000...Actually the greatest reveal from the human genome project was effectively, that we didn't really understand how genetics work at all." 3 Arnold Van Kampen Arnold Van Kampen 1 year ago (edited) Besides the genome, there is also the proteome. Proteomics is the study of an entire collection of proteins produced by one sell in an organism. In other words, is the study of proteomes. The primary purpose of is to understand the structure and function of a protein set and it belongs to the molecular study field. Q: That entire soup of proteines and how they interact is exactly how big a mystery? A: Pretty big would be my guess. doug cane doug cane 2 years ago The word "everything" in the title is a bit strong - however, the view that the media is too quick to make unfounded reports is very valid - especially corporate media whose main goal is to support particular material interests of the people that own them. 24 Todd Williams Todd Williams 2 years ago I love that scientists can constantly identify horrible journalism that deludes the public. I find it odd that no scientist ever speculates on why this is done or what benefit accrues to the news outlet. That being said I very much appreciate this lecture and as a medical doctor who enjoys genetics, I loved being schooled. Well done Dr. Rutherford. 1 psycronizer psycronizer 2 years ago 13:50..when you really look at it, doing it's thing, and you realize that carbon is of course the go to element for building stable, complex organic molecules, and you also realize that all the other atoms have very specific ways in which they bond with and react with other molecules and atoms, it becomes quite clear that, perhaps, this was the ONLY way that information could be coded and replicated GIVEN the specific ways in which atoms interact, complex ?, sure ! but it is clearly the most simple and energy efficient system that lends itself to replication, error checking and fixing etc. So, perhaps, it might NOT be such a big surprise when we spread our wings and explore exoplanets around other small G2 type stars in the habitable region...DNA or RNA based life I suspect will be the mode of life, just as we can be confident that it will undoubtedly be Carbon based we can also be confident that DNA and RNA will be there, I seriously doubt that anyone has ever managed to invent another system, artificially of course, that uses any other group of elements in an energy efficient way that can store and replicate itself, in a thermodynamically favorable way. So, you could say, that DNA and RNA and all the associated machinery of the Ribosomes etc. is simply a naturally occurring EMERGENT manifestation of the properties of these atoms and molecules, ie; this was unavoidable, a simple quality of these substances, given the right temperatures, solvents, conditions etc. Mark Martens Mark Martens 2 years ago "That takes us up to the 1980s where we had really seriously begun to elucidate how biology works. How life works. We had established effectively three grand unifying theories of biology which all say the same thing...Physicists have been trying to come up with a grand unifying theory of everything for about three thousand years. And how are they getting on with that? Not that well. In biology we've managed to do it three times in the space of a hundred years. And the first is 'evolution by natural selection' by Darwin. Actually the first chronologically came a few years before that and its called cell theory...Cell theory very clearly states two things which are universally true. All life is made of cells, and cells only ever come from existing cells, with one exception, which is the origin of life...This is just a universal rule. And it's good to have universal rules because it means you can set up a framework from which you can conduct your next questions....And the third one universal genetics....So, we've got it. By the end of the 1970s we understood how all biology worked....Except it turned out to be much more complicated than anyone anticipated." Petitio Principii Petitio Principii 2 years ago More than "the classic concept" of species being wrong, a common misconception about the concept of species is wrong, that it entails complete hybrid inviability even for closely related species. 2 John John 2 years ago The headline should read, "Some things you think you know about genetics, may be incorrect". 40 David Wilkie David Wilkie 2 years ago My personal understanding of Genetics is miniscule compared with what we've seen lately from Virologists. About as much as I can understand that unless you are using what you think you've seen and heard of "settled science" in a scientific discipline, you may as well remain an Objective Observer staring at Verisimilitude.., for a while, if it's relevant. Holographic Principle In-form-ation formulae of superimposed resonances of e-Pi-i interference positioning context of Actuality, and the observable aspects of Infinity available to study, means having a practical philosophical re-cognition technique according to the application. RichardofOz RichardofOz 2 years ago Fascinating stuff very well presented. BUT would have been much more useful if the exhibits had been expanded fully on screen, as the detail is lost when projected from a fixed camera position. 1 carp mon carp mon 1 year ago hmmm, so genetics aside, a big influence is the social interactions both positively and negatively effecting the out the outcomes.(e.g. most criminals are made by their environment or at least by the stress's that accompany the situation and how the individuals cope?). Lisa Schuster Lisa Schuster 2 years ago Anyone else so engaged by this speaker that his math and his logical fallacies ALMOST slip by... ? 3 Luk Maes Luk Maes 7 months ago Great that hé mentioned Rosalind, the real power behind the so called geniuses Watson and Crick Candide Schmyles Candide Schmyles 2 years ago (edited) Regarding the question on epigenetics and specifically how "Lamarckian Evolution " was a short lived phenomenon lasting only 3 or 4 generations. I dont see how something that is detectable for 3 or 4 generations can be quickly dismissed. More likely it is a vital level of adaptive capability that is but one of the ways in which an organism confers fitness on its offspring. Male sperm alleles continue to get longer till death and it seems to be experential coding that makes them longer and that is inheritable. Of course it also increases mutation risk too. I still think Lamarckian ideas have something in them. 3 Grant Perkins Grant Perkins 2 years ago "Everything living cell comes from another living cell , except for the first one". He must have considered that at some stage, but .... 1 lindosland lindosland 2 years ago (edited) Adam, I think you do an injustice to epigenetics in only mentioning methylation. Epigenetics was known to be much more complex than this even ten years ago when I attended seminars on it. There are dozens of different types of epigenetic modification, and they are turned on and off, deposited and removed by enzymes, and interact in complex ways. They are doing something important, so don't discount anything until we know what! I'de like to question your assertion that we are all (pretty much) related to (pick a famous person). Humans were, until recently, much more inbred than is commonly recognised. As a Yorkshireman I see this clearly - I can recognise a Yorkshireman, or a Welshman etc, by facial features and by temperament (I would say there are several classes of Yorkshireman I can recognise). This is because common people (unlike kings and queens, and your ancestors) did not travel outside their own village throughout hundreds of years, and so mated only with the local population. This created evolutionary bottlenecks that excluded much ancestral DNA - genetic drift I guess, amplified in each founder population. We are not all related genetically!It's important I think to realise that while we inherit half our DNA from each parent, and they inherit half their DNA from each of our grandparents, we do not therefore inherit a quarter of our DNA from each grandparent. Crossing over in meiosis can, in theory, result in us inheriting no DNA from one grandparent. What governs crossing over - could epigenetics have a role? It certainly isn't random but seems to occur at certain sites does it not.Another thing that bothers me is that sons often seem to inherit the father's characteristics and girls the mother's to an overwhelming extent. Just look at portraits of famous families on the walls of big houses! Imprinting is known to play a role in preventing overexpression of X chromosome genes in females, but might it not also play a more complex role in choosing genes for expression (and even for passing on in crossover)? It isn't just the media and the public who spread misunderstanding about genetics - Richard Dawkins is surely the major culprit when it comes to sticking to the concept of 'a gene for a feature', and I regard him as a scientist even if E O WIlson doesn't! And could you not have done more to put things right when you held the powerful role of editor of Nature? 6