[metmom]

Princeton biologists Laura Landweber, Mariusz Nowacki and Vikram Vijayan, together with other members of the lab, wanted to decipher how the cell accomplished this feat, which required reorganizing its genome without resorting to its original genetic program.

So a cell could reorganize itself? Whatever happened to random mutation and natural selection?

This is almost enough to make you wonder if it wasn't programmed to do this. Or if a cell could meddle with things, why not something far more intelligent and powerful?

[Maelstorm]

I don’t know, all I know as I have for some time that those cells are more advanced than anything we have created yet or will create in the near future. They have complex messaging and error correction systems and layer upon layer of epigenetic control logic. We have only scratched the surface what is there buried in DNA and RNA.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

Whatever happened to random mutation and natural selection?

The evolutionary theories of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) preceeded Darwin's natural selection by more than 50 years. Surely you aren't one of those who thought Darwin was the first to conceive of the idea of evolution, are you?

[editor-surveyor]

"What's more, this mechanism could represent an "epigenetic" pathway -- a route that bypasses an organism's normal DNA genetic program -- for so-called Lamarckian evolution..."

It appears that reality may have slammed the evos upside their little heads.

The fact that DNA effectively prevents the kind of nonsense that evolution would require seems to have suddenly sunk in. Now they are searching for ways to circumvent DNA's built-in protection? Lotsa luck chumps!