this post was submitted on 18 May 2024
1383 points (98.9% liked)

Science Memes

10348 readers
2264 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.


Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

That depends on what you mean.

Did a giraffe stretch its neck longer and longer, and then pass that long-necked gene onto its kids? No.

Can an embryo that gets a random mutation while developing in the egg/womb pass it on to their children? Yes.

This gets a bit more complicated if you really dig into it, though. Environment does change the expression of genes, and that particular sequence of genes that have been activated/shut-off/whatever can be passed on to children too.

Hence why children who were born to two shorter parents will often grow much taller than them if given much better nutrition. Or why obesity often shows up chronically in families that were poor or had limited access to healthier foods in other ways; their bodies had adapted to grab and store every extra calorie they could to guard against starvation, and unfortunately shutting that gene expression off naturally takes multiple generations.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

This was a fascinating comment to read, thanks for posting ๐Ÿ™‚