What came first: the chicken or the egg?

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valich said:
I am trying - as I always have been - to explore the limits of our understanding without being constrained or restrained by orthodox beliefs.
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Ooooh, I know! It’s such a drag to be constrained by existing knowledge. Having to adhere to established facts makes it so much harder to launch on flights of fancy.
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CharonZ: Further, your comment is also appreciated on the adjacent post: "What do you guys make of this":

"Louis isolated strange, thick-walled, red-tinted cell-like structures about 10 microns in size....Dozens of experiments suggest that the particles may lack DNA yet still reproduce plentifully, even in water superheated to nearly 600 degrees Fahrenheit . (The known upper limit for life in water is about 250 degrees Fahrenheit.)" http://us.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/06/02/red.rain/index.html
 
valich said:
I repeat, what about Retroviruses? RNA to DNA.
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What about them? Can you clearly and succinctly tell us what relevance they have to anything you are trying to say?

valich said:
The MBL Woods Hole is currently researching RNA-directed centrosome replication in clams. This is now a hot subject. Care to comment
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Once again, what relevance does this have to what you are trying to say? Centrosomes have RNA – so what? Other organelles and complexes have RNA – ribosomes and spliceosomes spring to mind.


Instead of trying to cobble together as much incoherently grouped information as you are capable of partially digesting, try putting together a simple logical argument that focuses on a single feature.
 
I think everything I have to say are have clearly put forth by Hercules.
Yes I know what retroviruses are. Do you want a lecture?
But you do know that it does not have any impact on your postings before, do you (rhetorical question btw).
 
As stated about, ionized radiation and toxic chemicals can damage the chromosomes in the phenotype and this then causes DNA damage, sometimes so severe that it can chop the double helix in two. If the break goes unfixed, the consequences to the cell can be disastrous, ranging from wholesale gene rearrangements to massive chromosomal breakdown. Chromosomal deletions and translocations from ionized radiation causes birth defects, mental handicaps, Down's Syndrome, Cri-Du-Chat Syndrome, and Wolf-Hirschhorn Syndrome. http://www.ratical.com/radiation/CNR/RICIP.html

"Soldiers who served in wars in which depleted uranium ammunition was used have suffered substantial genetic damage....Veterans of the conflicts in the Gulf, Bosnia and Kosovo have high levels of deformed chromosomes, increasing the risks of cancers and abnormalities in their children [10X greater than normal." http://www.xs4all.nl/~stgvisie/VISIE/du-link-cancer.html

The fact that genome alterations can occur in the phenotype, and then be transmitted by the resulting damaged genotype can not be disputed.

Cancer is another alteration of the phenotype. Viruses alter expression of the cell's copy of genes.

Retroviruses use their RNA genome to alter the host DNA through reverse transcriptase. A DNA copy of the RNA genome virus integrates into the host DNA during transcription. Reverse transcription alters the original phenotype. This occurs in the cytoplasm of the host's phenotype cells. When retroviruses have integrated their genome into the germ line, their genome is passed on to a following generation. This is how HIV/AIDS is transmitted.

"It has been speculated that the RNA to DNA transcription processes used by retroviruses may have first caused DNA to be used as genetic material. In this model, cellular organisms adopted the more chemically stable DNA when retroviruses evolved to create DNA from the RNA templates."
http://www.folkartmuseum.com/encyclopedia/Retrovirus/
 
"Genome alterations can occur in the phenotype"? Are you saying that germline mutations can occur? All right; I very much doubt anyone here would deny that, but what are you saying this has to do with the chicken-and-egg question? Are you saying that you think germ-cell mutation and/or somatic in utero mutation would/could have produced a chicken? If so, say so.

Geoff
 
As stated about, ionized radiation and toxic chemicals can damage the chromosomes in the phenotype and this then causes DNA damage
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The fact that genome alterations can occur in the phenotype, and then be transmitted by the resulting damaged genotype can not be disputed.
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Cancer is another alteration of the phenotype
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LOL. Enough said.

Valich, you either need to bone up on your terminology, or you have some clarifying to do.
 
What came first, the chicken or the egg?

None.

They are the same thing. You can't have an egg without a chicken and you can't have a chicken without an egg.

Both are the products of sexual reproduction.

What came first?

Asexual reproduction.

Then came sexual reproduction which evolved into complex systems like the 'chicken-egg' system. They co-evolved. The egg didn't evolve before the chicken and the chicken didn't evolve before the egg. They are the same thing.

And what kind of egg are we in fact talking about? An unfertilized egg? A fertilized egg?

In case we are talking about an unfertilized egg we first need a chicken to make one. And the egg is only half of the problem. The riddle should be: what was there first? The chicken, the egg, or the spermcell?

In case of the fertilized egg and the chicken we are talking about exactly the same thing but at different time points in development.

In all, it's just a silly question resulting in silly answers.
 
valich the confused said:
Cancer is another alteration of the phenotype. Viruses alter expression of the cell's copy of genes.
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You actually say: a virus alters the genotype of a cell resulting in an alteration of the phenotype.

Conform the dogma.
 
spuriousmonkey said:
What came first, the chicken or the egg?

None.

They are the same thing. You can't have an egg without a chicken and you can't have a chicken without an egg.
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Not to interrupt valich's illucidity, but: you don't suppose a hopeful mutant type might be more likely to go to fixation in an oviparous species, then?

Geoff
 
'oviparous' must be how it all started. A primitive multicellullar colony shedding gametes, or fertilized cells.

Not sure what you mean.
 
valich said:
The fact that genome alterations can occur in the phenotype, and then be transmitted by the resulting damaged genotype can not be disputed.
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And here I was, all these months, thinking you were intelligent, but confused and confrontational. Ah well, two out of three isn't bad.
 
We had this chicken-egg discussion in Free Thoughts about a year ago. Valich pretty much showed what a clueless cunt he was then, and here he goes again.
 
spuriousmonkey said:
'oviparous' must be how it all started. A primitive multicellullar colony shedding gametes, or fertilized cells.

Not sure what you mean.
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Just this: would alterations from fixed type be more or less likely in an extant oviparous sp. than in a vivparous, which presumably has more maternal instinct and certainly has more maternal investment than an oviparid. Some of that maternal investment might or should be contingent on the offspring resembling it, or at least the type norm for the species. A radically different offspring could be rejected. But in an r-selected oviparous species with little or no maternal post-partum input, it wouldn't matter that a few of the offspring were freaks; they wouldn't be disfavoured from the standpoint of post-partum/hatch maternal fitness contributions. So...there's be fewer disadvantages to being a 'hopeful monster' initially, or at least of being substantially different.

There are exceptions to the oviparious/viviparous thing: sharks, some snakes birds (witness the cuckoo, which is freakish compared to its nestmates, but gets fed anyway) but overall oviparous types tend to be r-selected with minimal care, so would hopeful monsters be more hopeful if they were from r-selecteds?

By support, I note that egg-layers have on average far, far more morphs than non-egg layers.

Geoff
 
spuriousmonkey said:
You actually say: a virus alters the genotype of a cell resulting in an alteration of the phenotype.

Conform the dogma.
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No, I said that a retrovirus alters the expression of a copy of the cells gene, and so does cancer - not the inherited genotype. There's a difference.

Anyway, I agree totally with your post above that.

What came first the chicken or the egg? Neither. Both evolved together into what they are today.

CharonZ: Bite the dust. If you don't have anything constructive to say, or educational, or motivational, then your deconstructive dismotivational criticism is not welcome on any of these forums. "And to think I thought that you were intellectual?"
 
Clearly they both appeared at the exact same time. The precursor to the chicken and the egg was the "chegg" and is actually much younger (from a species point of view) than suspected. In fact, early humans began breeding cheggs that exhibited a tendency to differentiate into small "eggs" and slightly larger "chicks", mainly because the taste of the chegg itself was rather disgusting while it was discovered that the seperate components were rather delicious. Eventually, over thousands of years of breeding, the barely ambulatory chegg was transformed into the highly mobile "chicken" form, with the "egg" portion imbedded in it. This combination of a self-sufficient "chicken" host with a convienient "egg" delivery system ranks as one of humankinds most successful domestic breeding efforts.
 
GeoffP said:
Just this: would alterations from fixed type be more or less likely in an extant oviparous sp. than in a vivparous, which presumably has more maternal instinct and certainly has more maternal investment than an oviparid. Some of that maternal investment might or should be contingent on the offspring resembling it, or at least the type norm for the species. A radically different offspring could be rejected. But in an r-selected oviparous species with little or no maternal post-partum input, it wouldn't matter that a few of the offspring were freaks; they wouldn't be disfavoured from the standpoint of post-partum/hatch maternal fitness contributions. So...there's be fewer disadvantages to being a 'hopeful monster' initially, or at least of being substantially different.

There are exceptions to the oviparious/viviparous thing: sharks, some snakes birds (witness the cuckoo, which is freakish compared to its nestmates, but gets fed anyway) but overall oviparous types tend to be r-selected with minimal care, so would hopeful monsters be more hopeful if they were from r-selecteds?

By support, I note that egg-layers have on average far, far more morphs than non-egg layers.

Geoff
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I don't know. Have there ever been studies indicating that 'hopeful monsters' can increase speciation rate or just the evolutionary rate. Have their been studies on the reproductive success of 'monsters'? I'm not really an expert in this field. I wouldn't know. Maybe it is a succesful strategy in times of environmental pressure?
 
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