scholarly journals The transmission of acquired characters

Diacronia ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max Morse
Keyword(s):  
Acquired Characters

Lamarck’s Two Legacies: A 21st-Century Perspective on Use-Disuse and the Inheritance of Acquired Characters

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Jablonka ◽  
Ehud Lamm
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Physiological Model ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Biological Plasticity ◽  
Inheritance Of Acquired Characters ◽  
The Law ◽  
Acquired Characters

<p class="p1"><span class="s1"><strong>Abstract </strong></span>| Lamarck has left many legacies for future generations of biologists<span class="s2"><strong>. </strong></span>His best known legacy was an explicit suggestion, developed in the <em>Philosophie zoologique </em>(PZ), that the effects of use and disuse (acquired characters) can be inherited and can drive species transformation.This suggestion was formulated as two laws, which we refer to as the law of biological plasticity and the law of phenotypic continuity<span class="s2"><strong>. </strong></span>We put these laws in their historical context and distinguish between Lamarck’s key insights and later neo-Lamarckian interpretations of his ideas<span class="s2"><strong>.</strong></span>We argue that Lamarck’s emphasis on the role played by the organization of living beings and his physiological model of reproduction are directly relevant to 21st-century concerns, and illustrate this by discussing intergenerational genomic continuity and cultural evolution.</p>

Waddington’s Processual Epigenetics and the Debate over Cryptic Variability

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Flavia Fabris
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Variation ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Modern Synthesis ◽  
Genetic Assimilation ◽  
Ontological Difference ◽  
Epigenetic Process ◽  
Recent Debate ◽  
Acquired Characters

This chapter reappraises Waddington’s processual theory of epigenetics and examines its implications for contemporary evolutionary biology. It focuses in particular on the ontological difference between two conflicting assumptions that have been conflated in the recent debate over the nature of cryptic variability: a substance view that is consistent with the modern synthesis and construes variability as a preexisting pool of random genetic variation; and a processual view, which derives from Waddington’s conception of developmental canalization and understands variability as an epigenetic process. The chapter also discusses how these opposing interpretations fare in their capacity to explain the genetic assimilation of acquired characters.

scholarly journals Darwin and the Transmission of Acquired Characters

Nature ◽  
1911 ◽  
Vol 85 (2154) ◽  
pp. 474-474
Author(s):  
E. A. PARKYN
Keyword(s):  
Acquired Characters

The Acquired Characters of Alytes

Nature ◽  
1930 ◽  
Vol 125 (3154) ◽  
pp. 562-562
Author(s):  
CHARLES WALKER
Keyword(s):  
Acquired Characters

scholarly journals Acquired Characters and Stimuli

Nature ◽  
1912 ◽  
Vol 89 (2212) ◽  
pp. 61-61
Author(s):  
E. RAY LANKESTER
Keyword(s):  
Acquired Characters

Development and evolution

1997 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Maynard Smith ◽  
Eors Szathmary
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Recent Progress ◽  
Sound Production ◽  
Germ Line ◽  
Black Box ◽  
Developmental Genetics ◽  
Morphological Form ◽  
Molecular Information ◽  
Acquired Characters ◽  
Development And Evolution

In the nineteenth century, ideas about development, heredity and evolution were inextricably mixed up, because it seemed natural to suppose that changes that first occurred in development could become hereditary, and so could contribute to evolution. This was not only Lamarck’s view but Darwin’s, expressed in his theory of pangenesis. Weismann liberated us from this confusion, by arguing that information could pass from germ line to soma, but not from soma to germ line. If he was right, geneticists and evolutionary biologists could treat development as a black box: transmission genetics and evolution could be understood without first having to understand development. Since Weismann, developmental biology has had only a rather marginal impact on evolutionary biology. One day, we have promised ourselves, we will open the box, but for the time being we can get along very nicely without doing so. Recent progress in developmental genetics, some of which has been reviewed in the last three chapters, oblige us to reopen the question. In fact, there are three related questions, not one. The first, which is most relevant to the theme of this book, is the ‘levels of selection’ question: why does not selection between the cells of an organism disrupt integration at the level of the organism? This is the topic of section 15.2. The second is the problem of the inheritance of acquired characters. This old problem has reappeared in a new guise. We now recognize the existence of cell heredity, mediated by different mechanisms from those concerned with transmitting information between generations. In section 15.3, we discuss whether cell heredity plays any role in evolutionary change. Finally, in sections 15.4 and 15.5, we ask whether recent molecular information sheds any light on another old problem—that of the extraordinary conservatism of morphological form, maintained despite dramatic changes of function. This conservatism has led anatomists to identify a small number of basic archetypes, or bauplans. There is little doubt that conservatism is real. Consider, for example, the fact that bones and cartilages, which in humans serve in swallowing, sound production and hearing, are derived from elements of the gill apparatus whereby our fish ancestors exchanged gases with seawater, and, before that, in all probability, from elements of a filter-feeding apparatus.

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