[FRIAM] Fairness in the genetic/developmental system

[Eric Smith]

Nick, hi,

The idea that it would be a consequence of selection on development, to tend to modularize the relation between genetic material and traits, is I think favorably viewed.  I mention this in reply to the boldface last sentence in your abstract.  Beanbagness of gene-trait correspondences would be one level where modularization could occur, but often it is discussed with the intent to apply it at many levels concurrently.

Two authors who are well regarded and seem to contribute more light than heat (an impressive achievement in the evolution community) are Kirschner and Gerhart.  Their particular name is Facilitated Variation, but there is overlap with old arguments of Herb Simon, though in K and G’s work, justified by very detailed and expert understanding of many particular cases from developmental biology.  You may already know these two sources:
  author = "Gerhart, John and Kirschner, Marc",
  title = "Cells, Embryos, and Evolution",
  publisher = {Wiley},
  address = {New York},
  year = “1997”

  author = "Gerhart, John and Kirschner, Marc",
  title = "The theory of facilitated variation",
  journal = PNAS,
  volume = "104",
  pages = "8582--8589",
  year = “2007”

This probably is not quite the same as your framing in terms of fairness in the input/output relation, but I will hope maybe it contributes as either useful or simply interesting good science.

All best,

Eric






> On Oct 28, 2017, at 12:40 PM, Nick Thompson <nickthompson at earthlink.net> wrote:
> 
> Dear Members of the Local Congregation, 
>  
> Today I “offered” to the group the idea that Natural Selection could not function unless the genetic/developmental system was “fair” and was properly challenged on the meaning of the term, “fair.”  With a  lot help from my friends, it became clear that all I could possibly mean was that natural selection could not proceed unless there was a correlation between parents and offspring in the possession of traits.  So “fairness” must to refer to whatever it is that has, in the history of evolution, made it possible for children to resemble their parents.   The argument was laid out in a proposal I made to a colleague for a joint paper, which, however, never was written.  I attach the proposal, an abstract of the paper I hoped we’ld write. 
>  
> Thanks for your patience, everybody.  
>  
> Nick 
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