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by asdff 571 days ago
Wait until you read about proteins that methylate dna and how this can persist across cell divisions and even generations.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8683130/

2 comments

Biology is messy and imperfect, and generally not suited to dogmatic and other normative claims - but that is also covered in the article, which mentions how Crick was on the lookout for exceptions.

I would guess that, in the ordinary cases of cell division, the replication of methylation is, on balance, desirable, and that it probably requires an additional mechanism beyond minimal DNA base-sequence replication. In that case, its near-absence specifically within gamete production seems likely to be significant. The cases where methylation persists through generations should not be ignored, and neither should the existence of a mechanism that apparently exists to prevent (or at least constrain) it (or a mechanism to

The original article does discuss methylation.