As I suggested in previous posts, many media, popular science, and official pronouncements about genetics, epigenetics, and genomics are sometimes at best misleading, and at worst, down-right wrong. As such, they are an obstacle to what you might call genetic literacy, and ought not to go unchallenged. The basic fallacies can be itemized as follows:
1. DNA reproduces organisms.
In fact, this is the exact opposite of the truth. According to the modern, “selfish-gene” view of genetics, organisms evolved to copy their DNA—to be its biodegradable packaging, or vehicles. Those organisms which preserved and passed on their DNA became the ancestors of all living things alive today.
This immediately explains why the quantity of DNA preserved and passed on is vastly greater than that needed to generate the organism and why it contains so much apparent genetic “junk”: notably disabled genes, genes copied in by viruses, repetitive sequences, and all kinds of other parasitic DNA inessential to the organism. If there is a true sense in which DNA reproduces the organism, it is only because the organism exists to reproduce its DNA.
[For more on this story by Christopher Badcock Ph.D., go to https://www.psychologytoday.co...tics-and-epigenetics]
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