Is Dune-Style Genetic Memory Possible? 

If knowledge is passed down, would qualifications be as well? Imagine a toddler with a PhD in nuclear physics.

Kid inheriting memory DNA: "Dad, who was that redhead you tumbled in bed with when mom was visiting grandma? Mom is blonde. Mom, who was the guy with the mole under his left eye you tumbled with while dad was at a trip to Hawaii? That wasn't dad." I mean, memory DNA right?

I dont want my great grandchildren remembering me helping myself to a lot lizard during a 3 month crystal bender

Issac is a national treasure. Straight up

Genetic memory - in at least one variety - is commonly called "instinct". So this establishes the principle, at least.

It's great that you mentioned the context in which the book was written and that could have inspired the idea in question

The reason brains exist, basically early animals reached limits to data it could store in DNA, so animals evolved brains from their early nervous systems to act as a temporary scratch pad to store extra information.

I vaguely recall Jean M. Auel’s 1980 novel The Clan Of The Cave Bear, about a _Homo sapiens_ orphan rescued by a member of a... cro magnon? tribe during the ice age. A key feature of the hominins were their ability to remember from their ancestors which plants were edible & medicine, what skills they need & where. I know that's fiction but I was always intrigued that the trait that gave them an important survival advantage over _Homo sapiens_ also put them at risk for extinction when the environment changes faster than inherited memories can keep up with.

I think it's important to consider how the human mind would process memories that are not their own along with any information that doesn't pass through our sensory networks in our brains. I'm not sure it is possible to learn things without processing it through our external senses. Maybe that's a topic for a video or is their already one on the subject that I'm forgetting?

this is how birds know when and where to migrate and those Monarch butterflies too.

There is a study done on lab mice that proves that phobias can be passed down one generation to the next genetic.

Some animals on Earth reproduce by eggs and by dividing, like hydra and worms. I can imagine that evolved species with this reproductive strategy, dividing part of their own neural tissue will do literal memory transfer without DNA. Other choices are also possible-cybernetics memory storage, neural replication, being a machine lifeform, being a hivemind or mycelium network specie. Or just read a book, it'll do. How many important core memories do we even have to share? Most of my memory is embarrassing moments and dialogues I should say different that suddenly appear when I go sleep, junk memes from internet, child traumas, my phone number, internal insecurities and mental issues. If it's for me to decide I'd rather want my kid blank than give my own shit to them to resolve.

DUNE was written in 1965 . . . but Pierre Boulle's 1963 novel LA PLANETE DES SINGES -- better known as PLANET OF THE APES -- includes chapters (the 33rd and 34th, i.e. chapters 7 and 8 of Part 3) wherein a young chimpanzee scientist named Helius who works in the encephalic section shows his findings to the novel's protagonist, Ulysse Merou, which showcases the recovered ancestral memories of human test animals -- so that a mute human female speaks of her ancestors' long ago memories of how the Apes began to speak, and then eventually supplant the human civilization of Soror. Frank Herbert might not have known about Boulle's novel, as the classic SF film loosely based on it wasn't released until 1968 -- and those chapters weren't carried over into the film version -- but, nevertheless, Boulle had the idea first.

Another story that does this is the Earth's Children series by Jean M. Aul. The Neanderthals have a genetic memory that homo sapiens lack.

There was a study recently that demonstrated genetic memory in mice

This seems to be extremely unlikely for personal memories but we do seem to inherit ghosts of large experiences like starvation during drought. This does affect us.

mother's milk, mother's memories. interesting concept

I imagine an alien species that can inherit memories would have a very different concept of life, death and individuality than we do. A parent whose child has all their memories and experiences might consider that child to be an extension of itself, as if the child and the parent shared a "soul" and were the same person. That might lead to a different understanding of death, an individual that dies after having children can be considred to "live on" in his child in a very literal sense, while an individual that dies without children could be considered "truly dead", all his experiences and memories gone. Furthermore, if memories can be passed on genetically it stands to reason that ideologies can be inherited too. Imagine people born with the nazi gene or the communist gene.

Genetic memory is usefully when you want a species to advance quickly and be super wise, despite most likely being younger or the same age as humanity as a species

Most of the DNA in our cells is not coding for proteins. We know some of this non-coding DNA (which we used to call "junk") serves various functions. Gene expression control, palindromes protecting genes, etc. But that leaves millions of pairs to possibly code whatever we'd like. We could in theory save a book into safe sections of our genes. To decide this book and transfer the information to our brain, we can imagine a few exotic methods. The most obvious would be to decode the data externally (using a sequencer), and just read the contents onscreen. Not very sci-fi. We could imagine a way to add genes to our own DNA to extract these DNA "books", and then stimulate the creation of synapses into the brain to inherit them as memories.

I interpreted the Other Memory as more of a cause-effect thing. The Spice grants prescience through extended use to some extent to some people. Guild Navigators, for instance, are able to chart safe courses through space using a certain level of spice-granted prescience. Reverend Mothers run the clock the other way. The spice allows them to access the Other Memory because they are putting the pieces of cause and effect together across millennia in the past. This thought, this emotion, led to this molecule moving in this way at this time, this sperm meets this egg, this child is born, etc etc etc etc

Holy, I never knew Dune had a big influence on Assassin's Creed like this!

This is a known thing. Scientists have observed epigenetic memories passing down for 14 generations.

If uploading memories and possibly skill sets becomes possible, then people will become superhumans who can customise their minds and possibly their personalities. A utopia _until_ malicious groups use it to literally force their world view onto others.

I always... ok, came to believe... That that, if real, is more likely to be the incoding of Skills, Habbits and other cognitive shorts cuts and their structual equivelants. Like emotions are for logic. I would assume that it would likely be coupled with language acting as a trigger. So when a people are forced to accept a new language as their native language, they reduce their access to their genetic memory. Which can actually be useful, if the memories incoded, the skills and the like, are actually maladaptive for their current situation...

There is such a thing as genetically encoded axon targeting. This is how baby horses have the instinct to walk after being born. All memories are encoded in neural connections so you could use axon targeting to encode them artificially. This axon targeting has not been associated with epigenetics at this stage of our knowledge so you’d have to read a living persons memories and then write the axon targeting genes into their genetically modified offspring to get it to work.

Imagine passing on worthless memories and cringe

Monarch Butterflies already do this.

the word you need is epigenetics...

Extraterrestrial life could very will have a more information dense type of genetic storage. Our DNA is a double helix, they may well have a triple or quadruple helix or perhaps a 3D lattice like an extremely complex octagonally symmetrical snowflake.

I seriously doubt any contemporary person can be said to have "billions" of homo sapien ancestors..I am too tired and high to bother to do the math, but pretty sure that is a wee bit off the mark.

yeah, pretty sure it’s a good thing we don’t have genetic memory. Because you’re gonna get the bad along with the good. All the trauma, mental stress, PTSD and things you’d rather not know about. Having a clean slate is for the best .

We enherit the information by books and education. Or nowdays by tiktok

I suppose you could achieve a higher compression rate if you included the proteins associated with d n a as well as noncoding junk regions.

How about epigenetic mechanisms????

billions of ancestors per person!? what!

Is there a Nord DNA? I wouldn't want all my memories passed on, and definitely would want to prevent it getting in the hands of marketers.

Most bodily functions are genetic memory, aren't they?

Unfortunately we're knocking on that door if we haven't kicked it in already. You really don't want digital memory storage to become a thing at all. The logical conclusion of that road is being able to delete/imprint memory. It's the beginning of the end in the sense that it will almost certainly lead to inescapable slavery.

Wouldn't memory passed on via DNA only be possible until the moment of procreation? You would only have memories from everyone up to their young til medium age when they have kids and rarely some from older people (mostly guys having children with younger women at high age then).

It happens in the animal kingdom and I've heard it's believed to happen in humans. Perhaps not to the extent of the movie

How do birds know how and what type of nests to build? Bees, wasps, etc. How do otters know how to build dams? Salmons swim upstream to find the same birthing waters? What passes on, the various instincts all animals have? Like the way a feline will hunt as opposed to a wolf, etc.

Is DNA a universal commonality for making genes? What would the genes of aliens be composed of, even interplanetary bacteria?

Hm. I wouldn't have wanted my kids inheriting my memory. Let all the $h!t I remember die with me.

It could be posible to: 1 made a dna coding all humanity knowledge and 2 made in a way that the person that have that dna could “read it” and know that information?

Yes

Vawy Intewesting 😂

not watching the short but yes its possible, cuttlefish edit their own dna and somatic cells remember damage

I don't want anyone to inherit my memories, unless I can hand it over to a producer to heavily edit out the traumatic stuff, then I'd happily pass down the useful and positive bits.

what about genetic GNARLEDGE, like Ork mekboys? how much genome-data would that take??

So in the Future Kids could skip Math Lessons

Interesting

Do spider possess something similar to DNA memory? How do they know how to weave their web?

The creed of reincarnation in eastern religions may be genetic memories blending in the sub conscience. That would explain why I often dream of doing some dreadful shit in the 1930s 40s.

Frank Horbort?

Saying instincts are memories is like saying our organs are memories. It's just stupid.

Maybe their knowledge and some feelings of love for me and our family, but I have no interest in gaining all their memories. Parents do icky stuff that is best left as theoretical. The weirding way and mentat training would be interesting, though.

You can't choose your parents, but that would be even worse when a lot of your direct ancestors turned out to be idiots and/or gullible fanatics. Or there's a _long_ family history of alcoholism that you've managed to avoid.

The data amount the human DNA contains is hardly more than a CD can contain....

What’s “instinct “? Genetic memory.

👍🏻😎👽

This is impossible for the same reason as uploading yourself to a computer, that's just not how brains work

Dogs have genetic memory. They know mankind and fire from long ago.

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