Filip176’s Reviews > How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology > Status Update

Wow: Up to 50% of the human proteome are disordered proteins that can do many different things, depending on the environment (the present ligands binding to them). Crucially, they have multiple stable forms and sometimes, ONE STABLE CONFIGURATION CAN BE PASSED ON DURING CELL DIVISION, as in BSE/Creutzfeld Jacob Disease. Adaptation and inheritance without genes. 😳

(2/2) So “genes” really are a concept that has been yoked to DNA. This relationship is shaky, and it explained why genes in a molecular (DNA) sense never quite made sense to me. Our understanding, Ball argues passionately, is fragmentary at best. SO NO WONDER genetics never quite made sense to me. We simply haven’t understood it very well yet.

Fascinating, addressing lots of uneasiness / ambiguities that always simmer in me whenever I think about genetics. (1/2) Quick recap of why that may be: The word “gene” is evolved from Darwin’s concept of “pangenesis”, how life springs from hereditary information. He postulated information must somehow be passed between generations.