Science 7 March 2014:
Vol. 343 no. 6175 pp. 1088-1089
DOI: 10.1126/science.1247472
PERSPECTIVE
MEDICINE
Combating Evolution to Fight Disease
Susan M. Rosenberg1, Christine Queitsch2
+ Author Affiliations
1Departments of Molecular and Human Genetics, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Molecular Virology and Microbiology, and Dan L. Duncan Cancer Center, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA.
2Department of Genome Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA.
E-mail: smr@bcm.edu
Molecular biology and evolutionary biology have been separate disciplines and scientific cultures: The former is mechanistic and focused on molecules; the latter is theoretical and focused on populations. However, these domains are beginning to converge in laboratories addressing molecular mechanisms that explain how evolutionary processes work, and bring these processes to bear on medical problems such as cancer and infectious disease. Each discipline can be viewed as a missing link in the other's description of biology, and in medicine.
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EXCERPT/EXCERTO:
Traditional evolutionary biology began in the 1930s with the “modern synthesis,” which fused Darwin’s theses on phenotypic variation and selection with Mendel’s concepts of genetic inheritance to explain the source of biological diversity. This synthesis predated knowledge that genes were made of DNA and of the structure of DNA and how it replicates. Thus, molecular mechanisms could not be integrated into concepts about how phenotypic variation is generated. Instead, assumptions had to be made about the origins of the variation that drives evolution. Among the cornerstone assumptions were that mutations are the sole drivers of evolution; mutations occur randomly, constantly, and gradually; and the transmission of genetic information is vertical from parent to offspring, rather than horizontal (infectious) between individuals and species (as is now apparent throughout the tree of life). But discoveries of molecular mechanisms are modifying these assumptions. …
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NOTA DESTE BLOGGER:
Ainda existem evolucionistas academicamente honestos (raridade aqui no Brasil) que reconhecem - Darwin kaput teoreticamente!!! Mas a evolução não é a pedra fundamental em Biologia? Na medicina parece que não!!!
Fui, nem sei por que, rindo da cara de alguns da Nomenklatura científica (amigos meus, até onde sei) e da Galera dos meninos e meninas de Darwin que, a cada dia, fica sem pai nem mãe na sua peregrinação ideológica que satisfaça sua angst existencial de que a coisa pode ser explicada de modo diferente...
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