[asianthrowaway]

Is this really Lamarckism though? It seems that what the paper describes is a mechanism in which specific cells "infuse" sperm with information relating to specific stresses.

Ultimately, we could interpret this mechanism as a trans-generational evolutionary defense against stresses (for instance, famines). But those mechanisms would themselves have evolved through the process of natural selection, and these "sperm influencing" cells would themselves be coded in our DNA.

That is to say, introducing a new kind of stress or environmental factor would not trigger any of these cells and would have no effect.

Correct me if I'm wrong but that's how I understood the paper.

[menacingly]

I'm far from my field of expertise, but isn't your point similar to saying that English is in our DNA because the tools to learn and speak it are?

I think if you disqualify the changes DNA _enables_ (rather than directly encodes) then you've moved the goalposts a little.

[asianthrowaway]

> but isn't your point similar to saying that English is in our DNA because the tools to learn and speak it are?

No, but the ability to learn languages is in our DNA

> I think if you disqualify the changes DNA _enables_

What our DNA enables is the ability to learn a language, not the language itself.

[menacingly]

Exactly, so extending this, the capacity to respond to these stress markers is in the DNA, but the specifics of how that will be expressed appears to be picked up environmentally and transmitted to offspring.

[asianthrowaway]

> but the specifics of how that will be expressed appears to be picked up environmentally and transmitted to offspring.

I mean I guess that is a possibility, but that would be incredibly generic wouldn't it? That a cell could somehow identify novel environmental factors and figure out what gene expressions to enhance/neutralize in the next generation to adapt to that novel environmental factor? Strains credulity.

[iguy]

In my limited understanding, the credible version of this story involves the transmission of quite crude information, like a response to famine.

Lots of animals starved, since there were animals, and the ability to tune the behavior on a time-scale of a few generations might have been valuable, so it might have evolved. The basics of our hormonal system have not changed much since very simple animals, I think.

[asianthrowaway]

Yes this is how I understood it too. Makes sense that such a feature would evolve when you think about it.