Talk:Genetic memory

Suggested references for additions/rewriting

Molecular biology-related

• Lasker and Nobel award lectures by Marshall Nirenberg: [1], [2]
• Genetic memory in immune responses, e.g. article by Dempsey et al. [3]
• Clustered genes as a form of genetic memory, e.g. article by Graham [4]
• Epigenetic "memory of winter" in plants that undergo vernalization, e.g. articles by Amasino [5], Sung & Amasino [6], Henderson et al. [7], Cell paper of original discovery of mechanism by Gendall et al. [8]
• Transgeneration (genetic) memory of stress in plants, Nature article by Molinier et al. [9]
• DNA methylation in epigenetic memory, review article by Bird [10]
• Epigenetic memory in cloning, PNAS article by Ng & Gurdon [11]
• Reprogramming (erasing the epigenetic memory) cells for cloning, review article by Eilertsen et al. [12]
• Epigenetic cell memory as a drug target, article by Bronner et al. [13]
• ... Please feel free to add! - tameeria (talk) 18:58, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Computer science-related

• Genetic memory as a hybrid of SDM and genetic algorithm, used for weather prediction, article by Rogers [14]
• "Genetic sparse distributed memory" follow-up article by Das & Whitley [15]
• ... Please feel free to add! - tameeria (talk) 19:13, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Combining biology & computers

• Article by Rocha & Hordijk in Artificial Life; talks in great detail about genetic memory [16]
• Article on memory (electronic or otherwise) by Flusser; talks about cultural vs. genetic memory [17] (free access for academic users)
• ... Please feel free to add! - tameeria (talk) 19:26, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Inappropriate usage of genetic code

In its present form this article makes a very bad usage of the term genetic code. The genetic codes of humans, monkeys, rats and many other very distantly related living organisms are all absolutely identical. What the well intentioned editors wanted to mean instead of genetic code was probably genome. Please correct if I am right, and please explain if I am wrong. -- Sophos II (talk) 23:31, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Loss during the additions

The only thing that the recent additions and refactoring lost was the discussion of how individual experience is not encoded in the genome. I think that it's important for the article to cover this, because it's one of the things that people have thought about genetic memory, but that a goodly number of sources explicitly address in order to contradict. It probably fits best in the discussion of paraspychology, inasmuch as the weak sources that I found that propound the view are generally non-experts writing in fields relating to parapsychology.

One source, ISBN 0738705136 page 94, propounds the view that the genome encodes experience on the grounds that "too many people whose intelligence I respect have given it credence". But there are plenty of sources with better credentials and better research rebutting this position, including ISBN 1567184995 pages 136–138 and Harper's Encyclopedia of Mystical & Paranormal Experience page 433, indicating that the view that genetic memory does not encode experience should be presented as the mainstream view.

The article should definitely cover the debate in more detail, as it did before. Uncle G (talk) 00:09, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

If you feel it is important to add it back in and/or give it more weight, please feel free to do so. I was trying to shorten a bit and cutting things out that I thought were redundant, but I'm no expert on the psychology/parapsychology sections. - tameeria (talk) 03:57, 19 December 2007 (UTC)