Biophysically constrained processes of rapid ecological adaptation link the light-activated creation of microRNAs to olfaction. The sense of smell is linked to nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled fixation of amino acid substitutions, which link the T- and NK-cellular immune response to the development of color vision, and to fertilization via fatty acid metabolism, and detoxication.
All the biophysically constrained processes were placed back into the context of neo-Darwinian pseudoscientific nonsense that links evolutionary processes to everything known to serious scientists about molecular epigenetics and biophysically constrained viral latency.
Retrotransposable elements are deleterious at many levels, and the failure of host surveillance systems for these elements can thus have negative consequences.
The interferon-stimulating copies of L1 DNA require a specific protein called reverse transcriptase. HIV and other retroviruses also require reverse transcriptase proteins to replicate, Sedivy said. In fact, AZT, the first drug developed to treat HIV/AIDS, halts HIV reverse transcriptase. Current multi-drug cocktails used to treat or prevent HIV/AIDS still contain specific reverse transcriptase inhibitors. Sedivy and his colleagues thought that this class of drugs may keep the viral-like L1 retrotransposon from replicating and thereby prevent the inflammatory immune response.
…the human population, has been ravaged by a virus called SHEVA some ten years previously (Darwin’s Radio) and today humanity is learning to live with SHEVA very much as we, since the mid-1980s, had to learn to live with AIDS. The big difference being that unlike AIDS (which destroys the immune system so laying its victims open to other (sometimes fatal) diseases, SHIVA mutates humans into what may be the next step in human evolution with the activation of dormant DNA (genes). SHIVA humans have additional ways to communicate with each other and can form tightly bonded communities. They also are more sensitive to ‘normal humans’ unconscious and biological signals. Not surprisingly there is a fear reaction among many normal humans and so the SHIVA children are rounded up into camps, purportedly for their own protection but also study and security/segregation reasons.
DARWIN’S RADIO and DARWIN’S CHILDREN have been released by the Sci Fi Channel and will not be developed by them for a cable miniseries. Executives had changed the tone and emphasis on these books substantially-rendering the New Children into vicious mutant aliens with elf ears, blue blood, and telekinetic powers, something of a mix of “Village of the Damned” and “It’s Alive.” Eventually, creative differences became insurmountable. Producers Michael DeLuca, Howard Braunstein, and Created By’s Vince Gerardis are now free to take the properties to other networks, or develop them as a feature film.
Re: “…creative differences became insurmountable.”
That’s a polite way to put this claim from Richard Feynman into its proper perspective on human idiocy.
In his book “Darwin’s Radio” (1999, Del Rey) and his sequel “Darwin’s Children” (2003, Del Rey), science fiction author and novelist Greg Bear successfully predicted that human endogenous retroviruses are involved in human speciation. His new subspecies of humans communicated with pheromones, as do other species from yeasts to non-human primates. This example of science fiction becoming fact contributes to a scientific understanding of epigenetics and human pheromones via a forward-thinking author’s grasp of molecular biology and his willingness to take the next logical step for his readers. Other fictional representations of human pheromones must also have some basis in fact; enough to be included on Wikipedia and other informative sources, if only to encourage forward-thinking by others. Indeed, in his November 2003 presentation before the American Philosophical Society, Greg Bear said: “What we [science fiction writers] write is far from authoritative, or final, but science fiction works best when it stimulates debate.” Moving forward as he spoke about epigenetic influences, he also said that chemical signals between organisms can change genetic expression. This allows the social environment to modify gene expression in individuals and in their offspring.
More than a decade has passed since Bear’s conceptualization of how pheromones might exert a powerful epigenetic influence on other species and on us. Those who are familiar with current works from molecular biology can now more fully recognize that Greg Bear was at least a decade ahead of his time. For example, see this article on human endogenous retroviruses and primate speciation. Also, my co-authors and I wrote about epigenetic influences and pheromones in 1996. The take home message that’s available through the integration of science fiction and scientific fact is that pheromones may be the most significant epigenetic influence of all. We are beginning to see this more clearly after our species sequenced the human genome and as we learn more about epigenetic facts predicted by Bear’s science fiction.
The specificity of pheromonal regulation depends on such significant characteristics as population density and population structure (age and genetic). Along with other conditions, it defines the reproductive status of individuals and, possibly, not only the quantity, but also the quality, of the progeny. If this proposition is true, then this mechanism can determine the spatial genetic structure of the future population and the speed of alteration of this structure [66, 67]. We suppose that similar systems of intraorganism regulation of genetic processes can exists in other animal species. Their detection and study is a new and promising direction of research for the understanding of the regularities of functioning of genetic material on organismal and interorganismal levels of organization.
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