No - you've got this wrong - the retroviral nucleic acid is spliced into the DNA of the host cell - i.e. its genes appear as genes in the host cell. Then new viral proteins are synthesized from these genes, since the host cell's protein creation machinery can't treats the 'invader' genes the same as 'its own' genes. So the CD is clearly violated.
>
> I wonder if the difference between the central dogma as stated by Crick
> and violation of Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics dogma might be
> this as I just said.
Well... in so far as retrovirii are probably going to be used to implement 'gene therapies', I guess you could say that they would play a role in the inheritance of acquired characteristics. To clarify - as I understand it, one approach in gene therapy is to take a retrovirus, remove its nucleic acid and replace with a 'fixed' gene (e.g. the correct form of the gene which, if mutated, leads to cystic fibrosis). Then inject the tailored retrovirus into a human, and let it splice the 'fixed' gene into their genome - the result is that the genetic disease that that human had is cured. Of course, the cure is inherited, along with the other genes in the human.
This is, however, different to how I normally have understood the Lamarckian 'inheritence of acquired characteristics' concept. As I've understood that, that is about some response to the environment being inherited. Nothing I know about biology indicates that there is a communications channel which can channel information about the responses to the environment back into the genome of an organisation - that would be a phenotype to genotype information transfer of a kind I'm not familiar with.
>
> However, we are talking retroviruses. No violation of either dogma by
> evidence from human genome project ,no ?
Yeah - as I said, I don't think the HGP should have provoked the discussion it did (from Gould, etc.).
> (((((((((((
>
> CB: I hate capitialism.
>
> I know what I was thinking, but didn't say. Does the sequencing of the
> _human_ genome give some potential insight as to where the viruses are
> plugging into the human host cell DNA or RNA to replicate, another point
> at which the viruses process might be stopped ? This would be something
> from the recent news and project that might help the work of the type
> you are doing.
>
Yep, the HGP is a step towards understanding the 'proteome' - i.e. the
complement of proteins in the human body. Understanding that better
will give us more of a clue about the human 'targets' the the virii use.
Once we've got human figured out, understanding how virii (which are
genetically far simpler) interact with human molecular biology will be
much easier. Full understanding of human molecular biology is a long
way off, though. Some scientists are comparing our position today to
that of the viewers of the first decent disections - we know what's
there, and now we can start trying to figure out what it means.
Peter P.S. some people are proposing a 'human proteome project' - a large scale effort to map out the structure of all human proteins. That would be a good idea, in my mind. -- Peter van Heusden <pvh at egenetics.com> NOTE: I do not speak for my employer, Electric Genetics "Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain and pluck the living flower." - Karl Marx, 1844 OpenPGP: 1024D/0517502B : DE5B 6EAA 28AC 57F7 58EF 9295 6A26 6A92 0517 502B