Epigenetic Changes In Genomes Happen A Lot, But They Rarely Last
Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - 14:10
in Paleontology & Archaeology
We've often defended Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. Publishing 50 years before Darwin, he can be forgiven for not having 'the greatest idea anyone ever had' and in the last few years, geneticists have gotten on board as well and no longer dismiss out of hand his belief that acquired traits can be passed on to offspring. Much of the pre-Darwin thinking was teleological and that is why natural selection in evolution met so much resistance. But science quickly won and Lamarck's theory of transformation went onto the ash heap of biological history. Yet in the last decade, we have learned that the environment can leave traces in the genomes of animals and plants, in the form of epigenetic modifications.read more