My understanding of the Weismann Barrier is that “info” gained by somatic cells cannot be passed to germ cells because of the segregation that occurs before birth.
Does the Weismann Barrier presume that there would have to be a linear relationship between the liver (as an example) and the genes in the germ cells that give rise to its development?
Organisms are naturally integrated. Though I need to check this out, I’m sure I’ve read somewhere that steroid hormones not only enter germ cells but are also transported into the nucleus.
Hormones are “messengers”, wouldn’t this count as information flow?
I know I’m missing something (ok, maybe a lot!) but I’m sure someone will politely point it out to me…
As I understand it, Weismann’s barrier states that environmental changes in an organism do not get encoded into the genes. It has nothing to do with what chemicals enter the nucleus, it has all to do with whether the genome is modified or not. Steroids, among many other things, can enter the nucleus, but they don’t modify the gene code, unless under the direction of meiosis. And meiotic changes do not reflect environmental changes, but rather reflect a ‘shuffling of the deck’ of the genome prior to zygote formation.
Again, this is just how I understand it. It’s been a few years since I did primary molecular cell research myself.
