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Switching Tasks Changes Worker Bee DNA
`puddingebola writes "A report in the journal Nature Neuroscience (paywalled) says scientists have observed epigenetic markers in bees that correspond to their roles in the society. From the article, 'Honeybees are born into their place in society. Those fed royal jelly as larvae emerge as queens and do little but lay eggs. The rest become worker bees and divvy up the jobs that need doing around the hive. While some worker bees remain at home, others take flight in search of nectar, pollen and other hive essentials. The entire honeybee workforce are genetically identical sisters. But analysis of the worker bees' DNA revealed that foragers had one pattern of chemical tags on their genes, while those that stayed home had another. When bees swapped one job for the other, their genetic tags changed accordingly.'"
Totally feel the bees on that.
Whenever I need to completely switch gears from one project to the next (like going from Drupal into Zend Framework), I will require at least two weeks of downtime (although I would never dare admit to it to my manager). It's unavoidable. It's like my brain is jammed between channels and no matter how much I beat the horse, it will be this way while my neurons rearrange themselves. Then, one sunny day, bing it's all realigned and reprogrammed and I'm off to the productive races.
Wish there were medical-creative downtime available....
Tasks are not! transcoded to DNA; this is NOT an exception to the central dogma of molecular biology. The epigenome is RNA and protein and smaller signaling molecules; the DNA sequence itself is untouched, and nothing happens to the deoxy-ribose sugar backbone.
Think of it as the metadata getting changed, not the code - a differing pattern of lines of code being commented out.
Epigenetics is not about the DNA sequence itself, but rather about how the DNA is managed and accessed. Generally it refers to the protein that helps to condense the DNA and make some parts more accessible than others. Really the more noticeable change would be in their RNA, which is the sequence of expressed genes.
Basically if your genome is a tape library, RNA is your local hard drive, which is pulling files as needed from the tape library. Your system RAM is, of course, protein.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Problem with Brave New World, 1984, THX-1138 and other dystopias is that no society like that would ever emerge. People won't allow themselves to be suppressed so readily. Instead you have to TRICK the people into believing their suppression is actually freedom & democracy. For example:
- Convincing people that private profits and shared losses is a good thing. - When the rich corporate managers "win" they get to keep the money for themselves, but when they "lose" then the loss is spread across the entire taxpayer base. (TARP and Stimulus Bills and QE1/2/3 are what I'm talking about.) Many people actually believe making the workers bear the burden of the loss is a good thing!
Somehow I fail to see how my losing ~$15,000 funding Goldman Sachs and Solyndra with free cash is benefiicial for me, but millions of other people think it is. That's a True dystopia. Rob from the poor/middle incomes and give to the rich.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
A Hive is not identical sisters. There are usually 3 to 5 males who mated with the Queen, so there are factions which are more closely related and they try to elevate their Queen larvae when the time comes to create a new Queen. Also, even the sisters with the same 2 parents are not genetically identical, they still have the usual mix of traits from both parents from when the egg was fertilized.
Awesome metaphor! You're generally spot on - DNA base sequence is untouched / nothing happens to the phosphate backbone / epigenetics is all about controlling which genes are made into proteins - but to be nitpicky, an important epigenetic phenomenon which is probably also operating here is DNA methylation. DNA is directly modified in a way which alters the pattern in which genes are expressed, is fairly long-term for the cell and is heritable by future generations of cells in the organism (i.e. epigenetically).
So the story title is very misleading, but technically correct.