Again, meh - in my opinion, this is wildly exaggerated in the popular press (perhaps encouraged by researchers in the field.)
It’s a straw man that anyone ever thought that protein-coding sequence was all that mattered. That notion makes no sense whatsoever - it’s like suggesting that a computer could consist of a hard drive and nothing else. People have been studying gene regulation forever. We have always known that non-coding sequence regulates the transcription of protein-coding sequence.
So the question has only ever been a quantitative one, just how much of the non-coding sequence has biological function, and we don’t yet know the answer to that yet. I don’t think that a quantitative matter like this constitutes a paradigm shift, unless the percentage turns out to be a much larger number than expected, and unless a whole lot of as-yet unknown mechanisms for biological function are discovered.
The first para of the Wiki article has a balanced view of the state of research:
[ my bold ]
Some extremely interesting and unexpected mechanisms of gene regulation have been discovered, such as RNA interference. And some aspects of epigenetic gene regulation would fall into this category too, although epigenetics is also wildly misrepresented and exaggerated. To my mind, this kind of specific discovery of an entirely new mechanism of gene regulation is much more like something I’d call a paradigm shift, rather than just a vague notion that more of the non-coding sequence may be doing something.
This example is interesting since it is a paradigm “double shift”. The discovery spoke almost of a causal link, however H. Pylori is present in about 80% of the adult population, and only a small percentage of these develop gastric ulcers. It is a somewhat symbiotic organism, the lack of which is implicated in various disorders, like esophageal diseases. It also influences the hormones released by the gastric system. The eradication of H. Pylori has been implicated in the obesity epidemic and type 2 diabetes.
Anecdotally, I can say that I have been suffering from Barrett’s esophagus and on the edge of Type2 diabetes, starting a few years into chronic antiacid medication. My docs have unfortunately not yet heard about the possible connection.
To someone who grew up just reading about dinos that were uniformly depicted as brown/green/grey and scaly, modern-day paleontology is pretty mind-blowing.
And it was already mentioned, but dark energy / accelerating expansion shook my worldview pretty thoroughly, too.
I was treated for ulcers for several years with no luck. I switched DR.'s and he gave me an anti biotic of some kind and I have never had a problem since. Are they saying the DR’s had it wrong?
That one was at least anticipated, though it was mostly in the sense of “well, if you want to be thoroughly exhaustive about all of the possibilities, you really ought to include this really unlikely one as well”. When the evidence was discovered, the theories describing it were already ready and waiting. I don’t think there was anything like that for the ulcer bacteria, though.
My vote is for the endosymbiotic evolutionary theory of the origin of eukaryotic cells from prokaryotic organisms. This theory posits that mitochondria are derived from ancient organisms that are in a symbiotic relationship with their host cells.
This includes all animal cells, and us, of course. Celluar respiration and the utilization of oxygen is carried out by the mitochondria in our cells.
Mitochondria actually have their own independent genome that is very similar to bacterial genomes. Each of us get our supply of mitochondria from the original egg cell from our mothers. Each time a cell divides, the mitochondria in the daughter cells also divide and multiply.
According to the linked article above, this theory was apparently first proposed in the early 20th century, but not seriously advanced until a 1967 paper and 1981 book by Lynn Margulis.
I first heard about the theory in 2004 when reading The Ancestor’s Tale by Richard Dawkins.
I believe most ocean scientists thought the deep ocean floor was barren of life till the hot vents were discovered with abundant life of all type around them.
I’m tempted to exclude dietary science from this entire discussion. We hear different things (new ideas overturning old) quite often there. Like cholesterol and food. Plus marketing makes it muddled sometimes. I’ve heard it’s one of the softer sciences, but I don’t know if that’s true.
Similar to the OP’s example, how about the realization that cervical cancer was caused by human papilloma virus and that we now have a vaccine for (a certain kind of) cancer? Seems like a big deal to me.
The advice was basically cut down on fats, particularly saturated and trans fats.
Nowadays dieticians will tell you…the same thing. Or some might say they don’t think there’s enough evidence that fats are bad, but that’s not exactly a U-turn, yet.
Well it’s tricky, because ideally you would give a large number of people very constrained diets for a long time. And ensure they don’t cheat, by perhaps supervising them.
The difficulty, ethical issues and expense of this, means many studies cannot come close to this ideal.
