Ah... to grow 1000s of pea plants in a monastery during the 1800s😌

A better way to think about genetic is that, rather than blueprints, they are a recipe. A lot of factors can go into making an apple pie turn out in a particular way, and it's not just the recipe ad ingredients list.

i honestly love how in biology every rule is essentially just "yes, but". makes it so interesting.

I stumbled upon this. I remember discussing many of these very things in biology and related courses back in the eighties. Many of us, including older professors, sensed that early genetic theory was oversimplified. Very good presentation.

I’d say Mendels is not wrong, in fact he’s super correct on how single genes get inherited. It’s just that there are so many genes and none of them get to exclusively define any describable trait, such that knowing how single genes work don’t really help you understand how describable traits get inherited.

I'm a molecular biologist currently teaching in a university. This semester I was given genetics units to teach and most of the content and topics discussed within the course don't make sense to me as a molecular biologist. I wasn't really able to put my finger around it, but I already knew about polygenics, non-Mendelian genetics, epigenetics, and such. However, the way the course I'm currently teaching was designed is highly focused on Mendelian genetics which doesn't fully make sense to me. Thank you for giving me the answer "why".

Wow! This one of the most important videos I've watched on KZfaq to this day! It took me 65 years if life and approximately half a century since hifh school to learn this most precious lesson. Thank you very very much!

I have a feeling that eugenics was the reason that such an oversimplified version became the mainstream textbook curriculum in the first place.

I think it's helpful to point out that many diseases, especially autosomal recessive ones, are in fact on or off by a single gene - while others, and most of our appearance, are far more complicated in origin

DNA is like the body’s firmware. There are functions to do all sorts of things, but whether they’re run depends on a lot of factors. There’s also bugs and malware too. It’s fascinating!

Really enjoyed this, appreciate the energy in the presenter, easy to follow and enjoyable can tell the man loves learning and sharing it! Thanks

I've been watching biology videos and documentaries for decades now and this is the first time I've seen someone actually mention the waddington analogy. (or in your other video, mentioned about proteins not just having one function). This is all great stuff, and I hope to see more videos from you!

FWIW, when I was taught about Mendel's experiments (more than half a century ago in Croatia, then a part of Yugoslavia), we were warned that there are very few traits that are determined by a single gene, with exactly one dominant and one recessive allele. For elementary school, I think that this suffices.

As a biologist, I was taught mendelian genetics in college way back then. It has been a lot of work (but work that I love) keeping up with modern genetics and relearning these concepts. I'm thrilled by the idea that young students will be presented with a more realistic vision of genetics that takes into account the progress that has been done since back then. I do believe that upgrading one's knowledge will always be a task on every scientists "to do" list, but I also don't see any reason basic education should be stuck with the same lessons that is missing so much.

Um, somebody incapable of understanding what is said is NOT 'They lied to you.'

It's so nice to see someone clarifying these complex misunderstandings in science. Great video!

I got a biotechnology degree 8 years ago. While I knew a bit about the subtleties and nuances of gene expression due to a course I took on developmental biology (senior year), this is the first time I've heard of the marble run model. The genetics courses I took with lab components were focused on Mendelian genetics as a general model, e.g. with breeding Drosophila melanogaster or splicing genes into bacterial plasmids, with any divergences from the Mendelian model noted as something like "yeah, this happens; the Mendelian model is incomplete, and we don't have a replacement yet".

I was in a human genetics program in the early 80s. At that time the technology for the human genome project was just passed the imaginary state, but still a long way from reality. One of my professors scoffed at the idea that the human genome project would take a long time to complete, and that it would not be very helpful once it was done, his position was that there were not as many genes as the people proposing the project suggested. That turned out to be true and why the project finished much earlier than anticipated. He also said that the genes, although essential, is only the first layer of complexity. The real wild west of genetics was in the control and replication of those genes for which we have almost no understanding.

Fascinating. I have been following other developments in genetics and the ultimate conclusion in this video seems to resonate with all of them. I feel this was an important video and/or statement to make. I can tell from other comments made that there are a lot of people who feel defensive about what they learned in school. The thing is that it should be ok to find out the world isn't flat or that some lines of dinosaurs gave rise to birds. New discoveries and new understandings of the world are made all the time. I liked punnet squares, but the idea that they don't necessarily work in the real world or that it conveys a flawed view of how genetics work is ok. It does tell me however that we should change the curriculum in school though.

i applaud your position on education. many educators believe that all of the true techniques and knowledge is "advanced" and should be saved until some indeterminate exclusive tier of education. To teach in such a way is the first step to turning education into a cult, and it is already a serious disease in the way our education is structured.

I've just come across your channel yesterday and was left absolutely astonished! The way you can translate scientific concepts and ideas into simpler metaphors without losing their original complexity and realistic implications is truly something to admire. Specially considering the obvious effort you take into researching the literature and maintaining a very evidence based approach. Congratulations from Brazil! We would greatly benefit from science communicators like you around here.

Can't believe this gem has so little exposure. I hope your channel explode one day!

Super big thumbs up on your video and I'll be sharing it on my Facebook timeline. Your explanations are elegant, and what impressed me the most in this video is your analysis that basically modern genetics over interpreted the importance of Mendel's experiments without realizing that they only apply to this specially bred peas he was working with. I think this happens all the time in models of human understanding, where only a few examples and often something that someone did not intend to be interpreted so widely, become extremely influential and possibly even dogmatic in people's in other people's point of view. Is like a species wide case of quote unquote jumping to conclusions. And any person who's lived any kind of life knows that jumping to conclusions is something that many many people are prone to do in daily life, so why wouldn't this apply on a larger scale to those models of human understanding?

I only knew the Mendelian version up until today. I'm so glad you made this video. Thanks a lot!

What's interesting is that I feel like I've already been taught this, but with those Punnett squares and stuff. I think a teacher taught my class the previous stuff of the "blueprints" but only to start our understanding since it can get complicated, but ended up saying that it was more like we've got options in our DNA, so in a way yes blueprints still, but we've got options that are more complicated than "blue or brown" that are affected by our environment. Like a reaction to what best fits. Thanks for this !

I like to conceptualize them as how geography effects the weather, so the arrangement of a mountain pass effects where the wind goes... But also the wind effects the weathering and erosion of the mountains shaping them slowly in very subtle ways over time (epigenetics).

I still say that "most of the time" is an operative phrase that is a solid foundation for a healthy, happy and productive society.

I learned so much! Thank you!

Absolutely fantastic video. And it’s hard to believe in coincidence when I just started reading Eugenia Cheng’s The Joy Of Abstraction and she mentions exactly the same approach to switching around the curriculum for students (math in her case), from increasingly dense concrete examples building towards a more abstract overview, to the opposite of that

What an amazingly edited video. I can't imagine how much time it took you to research this topic with different views. Thank you for doing this!

amazing! thanks for your work.

This was a fascinating exploration of this subject and very well presented. I think that videos like this promote better science by starting the conversation and inviting additional research into it. A brilliantly done and thought provoking video! 👍

Mendel wasn't wrong, his observations just dont apply to all of genetics. If you get past the first week of genetics 101, they clarify the proper application of Mendelian genetics

I really look forward to every one of your new videos, thank you for another great one! The analogies are crystal clear and very useful:)

It's been a year+ but I am glad I came across this video. 15 years out of school and I wish they would of taught this way. I have been binge learning about genetics starting with Y-Haplogroups and this has been crazy enjoyable. I can think of very few times in my life I have enjoyed learning this much!!!!

Man, you did a lot of research. Great video, thanks!

Wow. I was sure this channel had at least several hundred thousand subs just watching it. Really good job. I loved your video about organisms/the ship of Theseus/the principle of non-self too.

So basically this video presents a vastly oversimplified version of genetics, vaguely asserts that “most people” “probably” think said oversimplification truly encompasses the entirety of genetics, and then smugly explains that the reality of genetics is not so simple…with an explanation and visual aide that vastly oversimplifies genetics.

very logic and well explained, well done!!

No one has "lied" to us. The information has always been based on the best available data, and as that information changes so does the science. That's the whole point of the scientific method..

That was a very nice video! I remember my high scool biology teacher telling me that people with different eyecolors dont exist, so after she saw mine she was just confused😂

Great presentation. Particularly liked how you presented common thinking on the topic, without influence, and then say simply that it is mostly wrong. The illustrations and experiment demos are great to, making it super easy to follow you along. Overall, very well done. I look forward to what you present in future.

Yes!! ...so many things we have learned "wrong" because people want a clean simple model. It becomes absolutely infuriating to relearn these things. I agree 100%. Teach what we know as we know it and admit uncertainty. Great video and super explanations!!

I hate when schools do the over simplified version of things and have some inaccuracies thinking that we're not ready for the truth. Me who hates people lying to him and always wants the truth told to him no matter what. 😭😭😭 Remember you can believe whatever you want on the internet but some information you shouldn't. Good video by the way teach me a lot.

Even if Mendel’s Laws of Inheritance was wrong in the bigger picture, a lot was still learn and paved way for others to look more closely at what’s actually going own with genes. Even in school, alot of kids would talk about the 4 square thing with each other trying to figure out some things about our genetics. I have hazel green eyes while neither of my parents nor siblings have them, only brown eyes. My grandmother says her father had eyes just like mine. Genetics is so cool, almost like a peek to the past

So this can be boiled down to "most traits rely on multiple genes and it gets super complicated fast" which we all understood quite well in high school Biology in 2000. Im having trouble figuring out where the lie was.

Great video breakdown. As someone who went to school in the '90s, this was very clear. Additionally, it's also clear that there are multiple levels on all education paths. You have to start somewhere, with the basics. So of course a high school biology textbook is not going to be as in depth as people that's been their entire career on the subject. But it's always good to broaden your knowledge. I don't really see where the lies are. You just said the blueprints are more complicated than what most people with a high school level education believe them to be. Also also also, for someone who is old enough to remember the scientific breakthrough where we were able to map the human genome of one person to 20 years later, where we have basically a lot of genetic information in our back pocket, for those of us with 23andMe and ancestry DNA accounts.

Wow! Never had understood genetics this way! Great to know, thanks

Great and informative video, as usual. I really appreciate what you're trying to do in your different videos, i.e. making an understanding of the complex reality accessible to the layperson, it's rare and much needed.

I think of DNA as a sort of special zip file, compressed information that translates into more complex patterns of machines and keys. It literally just determines how an eukaryote cell /ought/ to act in different forms and stages, not how they /will/ act

Thank you! I’m not a scientist yet am thrilled with the information & your explanation. I agree that students are curious & engaging this with current theory wi. Capture their imaginations & spark a more engaged & aware society

I hope your channel blows up at some point. Great content

Thank you *SO* much for posting this! I haven’t seen this info elsewhere. And it helps explain SO much. I began transitioning MTF via estradiol monotherapy (no blockers) well into adulthood and I’ve been perplexed by what I’ve been told about genes VS my actual experience. Amongst a huge list of other changes: Cilantro no longer tastes like soapy ass. My eye color went from dark hazel to lighter green My father and I both have benign but very obnoxious cyst issues in our hands. AMAB with certain specific Northern European genetics commonly get them. I had them for probably 10yrs and they vanished after a few months of HRT. At the beginning of HRT, I got tested and fitted for my first contact lenses/glasses. This was during the pandemic and it took a few months to actually get them. During that time my near sightedness improved to the point that my prescription eyewear made it worse. Come to find out later that’s common and a 50/50 crap shoot. A lot of folks end up with worse eyesight, and I just happened to luck out. An entire adult lifetime of intense anxiety/depression that no drug could help with also simply……vanished……well not entirely but mostly. It’s too complex to get into here, but I don’t think that one is either genetic or psychological in my specific case however, but I have a decent idea of how that happened but it’s just an educated, experienced but ultimately also anecdotal conclusion. Learning and understanding these sorts of things absolutely feeds my soul.

I love this, aside from the fact that there are certain traits which are single-gene determined in the mendelian fashion, and the argument kind of implies their null existence. Eye colour in humans is polygenetic, but sickle-cell trait and disease is largely determined by a single gene (at least last I checked), and single gene colour mutations are obviously hugely popular in reptile and bird hobbies for their ease of breeding. Been seeing a couple of presumably polygenetically stacked line-bred animals like high red bullsnakes popping up more, and I'm sure rose breeders would nod in miserable and fervid vigor to the variation available in their offspring, but it doesn't eliminate single gene traits from our understanding of genetics, just puts them in perspective with the myriad other possibilities. Definitely a good video mind, mostly just saying that it misses a chance to put single gene traits clearly as one type of inheritance among a myriad of other factors rather than implying single gene traits are null and void

Very informative and very educative. Thank You...

Awesome... I love how you embrace complexity.

I'm a physics teacher. This was a very interesting video for me. I'd like to weigh in on the "shouldn't students be taught the simple model?" question, as I think it's a bit more nuanced. I think some of these ponderings might come from physics. Maybe I'm just seeing a nail here because I'm holding a hammer, but in physics the "teach HS students the oversimplified model" holds very true. Concrete examples are: * The ideal gas law. * Newton's Laws. * Ohm's law and rules for solving circuits. All of these models are oversimplified. They are all only valid in special cases, and they are all edge cases of better, more correct physical laws. And in every one of these cases I would very strongly argue against teaching the more correct model(s) instead of the faulty one. However, I think there are some crucial differences with genetics (if I correctly understand this video). 1) The 'edge cases' where these laws apply tends to be most of everyday life. In genetics, this seems to not be the case. 2) The better models are MUCH more complex, and are usually built on what we know from those simpler models. In genetics, it seems that the real models fundamentally contradict the simpler ones. 3) The better models typically require several extra courses of mathematics to get started with, so they're fundamentally less accessable. Now, it's important to note that from an educational POV, it is NOT a good idea to give students real life complicated problems at too early a stage. Beginner students simply do not have the thinking patterns present that experts do, so they can't evaluate the complex material in the same way. There is no real shortcut: they need to go through foundational material untill they have the brain wiring. This is NOT because students are stupid, it's because they're human and need to build on the knowledge (or lack thereof) they have. However, I don't think this is a good reason to teach students things that are simply wrong or misleading. Simplify the correct models as much as is necessary, and be honest about students that there is (much) more to learn. As an example for this: once the graphs and figures at 8:22 were shown, it immediately connected all the content in this video to knowledge I have. I immediately linked this to 'oh, so something like the environment can pbb change the number of stable outcomes' in my mind. This is because I spent months slogging on dynamical systems in undergrad (and I hated it, it cost me a lot of effort). A highschool student wouldn't have those mental connections, and rather than simplifying everything for them those graphs would be an extra layer of complication for them.

This is so good! Explained something that I've understood on an intuitive level from looking at the world and talking about it, but not understood the mechanism for very clearly (as someone who stopped studying science formally at 16) in such easy-to-understand terms. Vital stuff, given all the conclusions people leap to from the standard basic misunderstanding of genetics... I've subscribed and will definitely be sharing this and checking out your other videos. Thanks!

I learned something today. Thanks!

Very good description 👌 Thanks

I just want to make an addendum: just because the mechanisms for transforming genotype into phenotype are complex and difficult to understand, it is not true that then is not possible to discover the influence of genes on the physical or behavioral characteristics of individuals. For example, there is data on identical twins separated at birth, and from these data is possible, using statistical techniques, to isolate (with a certain degree of precision) the influence of genes on beliefs and behaviors, such as religiosity, intelligence, personality, etc. -- and this even if absolutely nothing is known about the mechanisms that cause such phenomena to occur.

Really like this channel. I've always hated laboring under misapprehensions from my science education and love revisiting these models. Atoms are not red and white balls with blue balls spinning around them. Electricity isn't water in a pipe. Evolution is not an 'Animorphs' book cover. Truth resists simplicity. Good stuff.

Thank you so much for explaining just how complex genetics is, and why; excellent.

This video was so well done. The illustrations were so intuitive to understand. I also really appreciated the value lessons regarding Mandelism because I see a lot of people falling for that binary bias regarding genes. Thank you for speaking about it! Please continue to make unbiased biology videos!! Much love 💞💞

I don't think I've ever had a lengthy conversation about genetics without it so easily sliding into eugenics.

I took genetics in the 80's and even then, Mendal was taught as an ideal case based on his selection of strains that were "pure". Fruit flies (the bane of all genetics students) are another example. It was never presented in my classes that gene A means you will express trait B. It was presented that there was an interaction of many genes for most traits. I think you have to start simply to teach people but have an obligation to ensure they know it is a simple model for teaching that does not explain the whole story. The same is done in chemistry, math etc. You don't start math with differential equations, you have to build up to it. Following the logic presented, physics, chemistry, math, biology all "lie" to teach people yet oddly enough we have made advances in all of those so something must be right. Over the course of my career I have been involved in many building projects, all of them had a great set of blueprints that we followed and almost immediately resulted in change orders based on environmental, material or construction issues. I think this is somewhat of an analogy for genetics. The "blueprint" is in the genes, but the final product can vary considerably depending on environment and other factors. I think the title you have been lied to may be catchy to get people to watch the video but is misleading.

thanks for putting this together. it was an absolutely awesome explanation

Great Video! SUBSCRIBED!

I find it beautiful that your "idols" or sources of inspiration are visible ,it really makes your channel more accessible to newcomers besides everything being already great

I have been following Dr Bruce Lipton's explanation of Epigenetics. He says the genetic code is still a blue print. But how it is 'read' and translated depends on signals from the 'environment'.

are models like those at 9:15 the stuff mathematicians are involved with when studying 'local optima'? it *feels* like that's the same principle, but I can imagine to be grossly mistaken

finally a good explanation of genetics with great visual examples!!

As a biologist myself, i don't have an issue teaching simplified genetics before teaching advanced genetics. We do the same in physics when we introduce perfect spheres and frictionless surfaces. The more challenging aspect of education is to actually grab a student's interest. Get the kids equipped with enough knowledge to start getting their hands into experiments and you get kids who want to pursue further education. Drown kids in way too many details and you get kids who want to run to recess ASAP.

OMG! You're doing so much good service and communication! Not only are you giving us a more accurate idea of how genetics actually are involved in the making of our person, contextualizing it as a very complex dynamic that interacts with other complex dynamics, you're even undoing all the terrible eugenics-lite ideologies that use antiquated models to justify themselves! You have gained a new subscriber!

Wow! This is an eye opener.

Priceless information. My son is in 8th grade and a genius. I’m sending him this video. He will find it fascinating and probably use it to spark discussions in his biology class. I appreciate, most especially, your viewpoint on keeping curriculum relevant and evolving as more insights come about. I look forward to the day when the education system is much more fluid and critically engaging. Thank you!

Loving everything you are doing with this channel. Keep up the great work.

I too dislike oversimplification when learning as it only leads to an incorrect understanding and confusion when you try to figure out why things don't work out the way you were taught. It's important to be open-minded and willing to question everything you've been taught for that reason.

This bit @4:20 from Conrad Waddington is really interesting. This is kind of like how neural networks work. That looks like a high dimensional manifold!

I graduated from high school in the 1960s. They didn’t teach us much about this even in the biology class I took. What I heard about inherited traits back then was pretty much proven inaccurate by my much older half brother, his wife, and their eight kids. My brother had light brown hair but had some red in his beard. His wife had black hair. As did her siblings and parents. None of their children gave black hair. Two have very dark brown on their heads. Darker brown than mine, but not black. One does get a black beard. Two are kinky red heads with freckles. Two have white blond hair and two have light brown. If they didn’t look so much like combinations of both parents people would think they didn’t have the same father. Per what was said at the time. I didn’t know my daughter kept telling her older brother for years that he was adopted because he didn’t look like me or their father. That still pisses me off. She changed her mind when she saw a picture of a long dead distant male relative. That was when I found out what she had believed. The thing to remember is this stuff is theoretical and always has been. Not absolutes and subject to change as they learn more and discover hiccups in their theories. When I was in high school they still believed the land masses had always been where they were. There had only been one species of human. Only four races of humans and they only came in four color categories. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣. Brown wasn’t on that color chart. The problem is that by the time the theories are dispersed those down the line tend to present them as absolutes. I do it too. Death seems to be the only absolute.

These videos are really good! Thanks for making them:)

Amazingly well-done video. Great explanation and you developed a wonderful and rich metaphor to go forward with in deepening my understanding of genetics. Thank you! As someone who's had to sit through introductory economics courses multiple times due to being a transfer student in college, I get extremely frustrated with the sorts of arguments espoused by that HN comment you showed. I consider Econ 101's simplified concepts not only empirically wrong, but actively harmful towards people's understandings of how economic analysis actually works

Excellent. Thank you!

That's what got me here, I knew of the peas, everyone knows about the peas, but I didn't know about this, thank you. I don't think I will ever need this, but just like finding a broken BetaMax player at a Yard Sell, I'm glad I have it now.

It isn't so much that we were lied to about genetics as they turned out more complicated than 1 gene equals one trait. Each gene is often linked to several traits and traits are often influenced by multiple genes, so it isn't as easy as flicking off one mutated gene to cure a genetic disorder because that might also trigger 3 or 4 other problems or it might not do anything because it wasn't the only gene causing the problem.

14:08 Mendel was only 7 years old! He was brilliant for that age, wow!

Great review, thanks

Amazing, thank you for this

So this video got me mad in a good way, I'm a med student and already studied genetics IN UNI and yet I was never told of this. I do remember being taught that sometimes there was a percentage of cases where a dominant gene wouldn't be expressed, but they clarified this was a small percentage and was very disease and math problems oriented. I'm honestly so disappointed rn, how can it be that I passed genetics in med school yet never heard of this?

This is a fantastic video! Very glad to have stumbled on it. Very concise explanation of a concept so important. Biology is both far more complicated and far better understood than the average person would think!

I recommend reading Eric Babteste's "Tous entrelacées". It's in french but it might already have been translated into English

Well explained. Thanks for the video.

This is the best ,& long overdue . Keep up the excellent work ! 🌟👍

Nice video. Mendelian inheritance is still a useful to analyse inheritance of "molecular" phenotype (basically, inheritance of mutations them self and of the PCR product or output of what ever technique you use to study them). As a Univ teach in biology, I have no problems to begin with some mendelian trait but I do agree that it should not be the alpha and the omega of the course as even Mendel did observe complex trait inheritance influence by numerous loci. SRY is a nice example of mainly 100% mendlelian inheritance. So I would be a little bit more subtil than "it does not explain anything" by speaking about probabilities. Have SRY raise strongly the probability to be born "male" but other genes can modify the outcome. All is about probabilities and mendelian inheritance are probabilities monsters of 0 to 1 prob without much intermediary. I love the fact that you self corrected your self : we don't inherite genes, we inherite gene variation or alleles. There is no gene for intelligence, weight beauty of whatever, but allelic variations associated with quantitative shifts in the aforementioned phenotypes. A long post to said basically : Good work :)

I think blueprint is still a valid comparison. If you have ever tried to build anything from a blueprint, you would know they are merely suggestions that steer the direction of the construction. The final product of anything complex never matches blueprint. You find many things on the print that are just not possible, practical, or would not yield the intended result.

Brilhante video..aprendi na escola o antigo modelo Medeliano....obrigado por nos ensinar a realidade da natureza!

You earned my sub. My fundamentals of biology has been improved and now have a more accurate understanding of how genes actually work in the real worlds.

It's still a blueprint tho, just way more complex than the one Mendelian model presents

As usual when we know a little bit about something we are certain it works this way when we study it more in depth we become more aware of its unpredictability perhaps a day will come when we discover the fundamentals of it for the time being it seems like we're looking for reason in what appears to be random or engineered

In the Tri-stable regime…. It would seem that there isn not in fact three planes … if you take the midline ridge, it either has to 1) flatten out before the ridge gets to the bottom “corner” … or 2) it does not flatten out before it reaches the bottom “corner”. If it does flatten prior to the corner, and all areas being of equal dimension and level, then there is nothing to stop the ball from going anywhere that is represented by some level of divide… It it DOES NOT flatten out and there is the slightest bit of dividing ridge, then you should only get a right or left deviation … help me out here 😊