Geneticists think of
genes as coded messages that produce proteins.
Each gene is coded onto the spiral helix of DNA in a sequence of 4
nucleotides. A series of these, when "read" by the enzyme transcriptase,
generates a molecule of RNA that moves into the cytoplasm of the cell. Nobody has yet
worked out the details of how all this transcribing and movement of molecules is actually
orchestrated, or accomplished. But once it is, the RNA links up with ribosomes. These are
little bacteria that act as protein factories. They read the RNA codes and produce the
required proteins. Each protein (a gene specifies only one) results in some particular
characteristic - like red eyes in a fruit fly.
Unto this very day geneticists devoutly believe this explains
heredity. They have produced mountains of papers and books on the subject.
Someday, maybe soon, they will stop to consider the monarch
butterfly and realize that this process might, possibly, explain red eyes versus white
eyes in fruit flies but offers very little explanation of how creatures pass along
memories to their kids. Like exactly where those fir trees are in Mexico, how to get
there, or the desire to get there.
Or how bird songs are passed on from generation to generation. Or
how, if you are a sea turtle, to read the stars to get back to your native beach. Or,
closer to home, how to laugh, cry, walk, speak a language.
Dr. Ralph Gerard, a
neurophysiologist that worked at the University of Michigan, wrote one of the best
papers ever written on evolution, "Learning, the Residue of Change." It was
published in 1963 in the center of a three volume series called Evolution After Darwin. As
far as I can determine, nobody paid any attention to this paper at all. In this paper Dr.
Gerard tried to get geneticists to think about the amazing similarities between language
evolution and biological evolution. They didn't.
Though scientists know we record our memories in the same kinds of
molecules that we record our genes in, and though Dr. Gerard pointed out how similar
memory traces were to genetic traces, the geneticists and evolutionary biologists just
couldn't get the message. So here it is.
Genes are memories.
Memories of how to behave. Yes, memories of how to make proteins, but also memories of how
the whole cell and even the whole organism should behave in certain conditions. Recent
discoveries in the embyonic development of the brain adds
strong support to this view. The basic patterns of our brains are organized by a kind of
cellular singing, and it is difficult to imagine the chant emanating from DNA other than
as a memory.
Memories, like genes,
are not limited to a single cell somewhere,
but are emergent.
Like mind, involving lots of cells doing things
together that none of them could do alone.
Like chanting up patterns of behavior, ways
of communicating, coordinating, responding,
observing. Ways to be aware together, to be
conscious.
Memories exist - as does everything -
as information passes through the webs of communications. They come into
being, they appear, they emerge, as transcriptase molecules "read" the coding of
the DNA molecules. DNA not read is like a book that is not read. The ideas do not exist
until somebody reads them and can understand them.
Memories read from the DNA spread as communications between RNA
molecules and Ribosomes - become modified and retransmitted by the cellular organelles and
this then modifies how the whole cell responds to information from its environment and
what it will communicate to the other cells in its web of communications.
The events in the life of the individual cell, the information it
receives from its environment, modifies what information gets read from the library
contained in the strands of DNA.
We don't get confused about how
memories can generate a navigational map or a song
Memories include finding your way around, remembering landmarks, or
stoking up the whole body to stand up and sing out loud with just the right tones, just
the right melody and harmony, just the right breathing. Passing along the memory of a star
map or a bird song to the next generation via genetic memories is no more
complicated or mysterious than doing it socially. We inherit most of our maps and music
like birds do, from the previous generation. Same way we inherit our language and our
smile.
Memories
Now this is also something of a miracle. Memory. And we do have to
wonder about how we record it and play it back to our own minds. It's easier to understand
if we realize the whole spectrum of information flow, from population to individual, from
individual to cells, from cells to DNA is a single, nested communication
process. The flow of information spans all the levels even if the language changes
between them. Who knows, maybe monarchs pass along their goal between adults, the whole
population, not individuals, heading South, converging along lines of common interest.
The DNA library of memories is protected by very strict
physiological rules. Exactly how information is recorded there is locked into the complex
history of evolution. What we learn after birth is divided into
long term memory and short term memory, stored throughout the system (cell, human,
society, ecosystem). But not genetic memory.
Genetic memory shifts gradually, according to conditions imposed by
the larger networks of communications. Drifting down current on the winning combination of
memories that float in the river of life.
How can larger communication webs control
the education of the smaller beings that create it?
You do it all the time when you might teach your muscle cells new
tricks constant exercise or repeating certain motions again and again. Ecosystems, made up
of communication networks between many different species, impose direct controls over the
survival of the individual plants and animals that live within them. Not with the same
kind of smug determination you might have in teaching your cells new tricks, but with the
same long term inevitability that is far beyond the horizons of perceptions of your cells
or their components.
A more easily understood example of how larger systems modify
evolution is the way our individual actions help modify the conditions for survival of
other creatures and ourselves in the future. Humanity is really shining in this ability
just now, modifying the world in large ways - destroying forests, the ozone layer, the
surface of the sea, and thousands of species at an amazing rate. Moving species from one
place to another and cultivating massive populations of those we like at the expense of
those we don't like or don't care about. It is manifestly evident that our human web of
communications is an extremely powerful control of genetic evolution. Even to the point of
manufacturing new genotypes to order.
And, other than genetic engineering, can events we learn during our
lifetime somehow be encoded in DNA and passed on to future generations? This is, after
all, the normal process for most life on the planet (bacteria and single cell organisms
and plants that reproduce asexually).
There may be times and conditions - I think there are anyway - when
things we discover during our individual lives actually do get logged into the DNA memory.
But that is just speculation and I don't have any real proof of it.
However, I am sure there are times, maybe more often than you
imagine, when some of the ancient DNA memories crop up all the way into consciousness and
give us serious pause for thought.
We have to be paying attention to notice them. I know I have
experienced some memories that seem ancient, from long before I was born. Like maybe
monarch butterflies thinking they have, sometime, a long long time ago, seen that
particular tree in the central mountains of Mexico.
Another great and mysterious case of bug evolution is the fire ant treaty.
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Before you die, you spawn and leave some eggs. The eggs hatch, become
caterpillars, eat leaves, spin a cocoon, burst out as brand new butterflies, and
continue the journey to the fir tree down south in the mountains of Mexico. 
Next
spring, another caterpillar episode and your grandchildren flap up up and
away, bound for the sunny hills of Canada.