Jaques Monod Albert Camus et l’affaire Lyssenko.
1) Molecular genetics: A revolutionary meeting of minds
2) Jacques Monod Quelques pages inédites de sa vie.
https://www.biusante.parisdescartes.fr/sfhm/hsm/HSMx2015x049x001/HSMx2015x049x001x0041.pdf
https://www.nature.com/articles/501487a
Trofim D. Lyssenko, né à Kiev, devient ingénieur agronome. Sa carrière fulgurante le conduit en 1938 à la tête de l’Académie des sciences agronomiques de l’URSS. Sa doctrine scientifique, basée sur la transmissibilité des caractères acquis, devient une idéologie.
Quant à Jacques Monod, il n’a aucune hésitation et publie dans le journal Combat que dirige alors Camus, un article au titre éloquent en première page : “la victoire de Lyssenko n’a aucun caractère scientifique” et termine de façon radicale : “En définitive ce qui ressort le plus clairement de cette grotesque et lamentable affaire, c’est la mortelle déchéance dans laquelle est tombée en URSS la pensée socialiste”
Trofim D. Lysenko, born in kyiv, became an agricultural engineer. His dazzling career led him in 1938 to head the USSR Academy of Agricultural Sciences. His scientific doctrine, based on the transmissibility of acquired characteristics, becomes an ideology.
As for Jacques Monod, he had no hesitation and published in the newspaper Combat which Camus was then directing, an article with an eloquent title on the first page: “Lysenko's victory has no scientific character” and ended radically: “ Ultimately what emerges most clearly from this grotesque and lamentable affair is the deadly decline into which socialist thought has fallen in the USSR.
Peut-on aujourd’hui exclure la transmissibilité des caractères acquis ?
Can we exclude today the transmissibility of acquired traits ?
Given that epigenetic modification is now known to be able to persist for at least two generations the answer is no.
This is actually a complicated question and to some extent it depends upon your definitions.
As a general answer, nothing has changed and acquired traits are not transmissible.
But there are some exceptions. For example epigenetic events such as methylation can in some cases be transmitted for for a few generations but not permanently. So they might be transmissible in a loose sense because they do get transmitted for a few generations.
Other examples could be environmental cues that trigger genome changes, not through mutations but through programmed genetic rearrangements. Again a very specialized and fairly rare situation but it does happen.
as transmissible acquired traits you can add the microbiota and culture (as for example language ) ...
Thank you all for your contribution. Microbiota, culture, stress, viruses etc are all considered as inducible factors, the language, regulating modification and thus, possible, transmissibility of acquired traits. Epigenetics apparently is the first mechanism linking Signal transduction to transmissibility without genes modifications. I found the Monod, Camus and Lyssenko relationship as of great interest for two reasons, the one reveals the social conception of that period, the absurd, the realm and the revolutionist and the second is the conception that everything out of genome even for a revolutionist has no scientific character when talking for transmission.
Culture affects plants and humans. If, epigenetics is an intermediate mechanism linking Signal to Genes what is the structure, real or virtual, which possibly transmits a new trait (step1) from generation one to generation two (Step2)…
Transmissibility requires two steps, step 1 which is the beginning, the origin, represents the base, the foundations, and the solidity; step 2 represents the instructions, the knowledge, the reason of the new existence. Memory is the guarantor of this past, of what was. Its function is to recall this past and to prolong it in the future. In the absence of memory, step 1 remains step 1 and step 2 does not exist, it is another step1.
It is by turning in the past that the evolution can rise to true knowledge. Write and rewrite the genetic code is the foundation of biological entities evolution. The reason of this evolution is the instructions, the knowledge, the reason of the new existence, the signal.
The question is what the memory is in the process of transmissibility. As humans we can read the genetic code and we can compare step1 to step2.
Is possible to any biological entity to read the genetic code or do all these entities have a genetic code? What is the memory when knowledge is not restricted to humans?
Maybe insects have also a memory/knowledge which might be independent of genetic code and thus, we call it natural selection. Natural selection (or artificial selection), compares step 1 to step 2 for the insects in the absence of humans but what really is natural selection? Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution. Death is the main selection mechanism. What is the memory?
The transmissibility of acquired traits requires a memory construction which is the guarantor of this past, of what this information was at step1 and, which creates step2.
Transmissible cancers are malignant somatic cell clones that spread between individuals via physical transfer of living cancer cells. Such tumours evolve across a longer “tape of life” than other cancers, extending well past the life span of any individual host.
file:///C:/Users/PC/Downloads/s41559-022-01790-3.pdf
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