Lamarckism, also known as Lamarckian inheritance or neo-Lamarckism, is the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime. It is also called the inheritance of acquired characteristics or more recently soft inheritance. The idea is named after the French zoologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829), who incorporated the classical era theory of soft inheritance into his theory of evolution as a supplement to his concept of orthogenesis, a drive towards complexity.
Introductory textbooks contrast Lamarckism with Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. However, Darwin's book On the Origin of Species gave credence to the idea of heritable effects of use and disuse, as Lamarck had done, and his own concept of pangenesis similarly implied soft inheritance.
Many researchers from the 1860s onwards attempted to find evidence for Lamarckian inheritance, but these have all been explained away, either by other mechanisms such as genetic contamination or as fraud. August Weismann's experiment, considered definitive in its time, is now considered to have failed to disprove Lamarckism, as it did not address use and disuse. Later, Mendelian genetics supplanted the notion of inheritance of acquired traits, eventually leading to the development of the modern synthesis, and the general abandonment of Lamarckism in biology. Despite this, interest in Lamarckism has continued.
Since ca. 2000 new experimental results in the fields of epigenetics, genetics, and somatic hypermutation proved the possibility of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance of traits acquired by the previous generation. These proved a limited validity of Lamarckism. The inheritance of the hologenome, consisting of the genomes of all an organism's symbiotic microbes as well as its own genome, is also somewhat Lamarckian in effect, though entirely Darwinian in its mechanisms.
The inheritance of acquired characteristics was proposed in ancient times, and remained a current idea for many centuries.
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
The goal of the course is to guide students through the essential aspects of molecular neuroscience and neurodegenerative diseases. The student will gain the ability to dissect the molecular basis of
Biology is becoming more and more a data science, as illustrated by the explosion of available genome sequences. This course aims to show how we can make sense of such data and harness it in order to
Pangenesis was Charles Darwin's hypothetical mechanism for heredity, in which he proposed that each part of the body continually emitted its own type of small organic particles called gemmules that aggregated in the gonads, contributing heritable information to the gametes. He presented this 'provisional hypothesis' in his 1868 work The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, intending it to fill what he perceived as a major gap in evolutionary theory at the time.
The peppered moth (Biston betularia) is a temperate species of night-flying moth. It is mostly found in the northern hemisphere in places like Asia, Europe and North America. Peppered moth evolution is an example of population genetics and natural selection. The caterpillars of the peppered moth not only mimic the form but also the colour of a twig. Recent research indicates that the caterpillars can sense the twig's colour with their skin and match their body colour to the background to protect themselves from predators.
'Charles Robert Darwin' (ˈdɑrwɪn ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended from a common ancestor is now generally accepted and considered a fundamental concept in science. In a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace, he introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding.
Explores neuroepigenetics, focusing on chromatin structure, regulation, and epigenetic inheritance in neurodevelopment.
Explores X-linked heredity in humans, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, inheritance patterns, and sex determination in organisms.
Explores the implications of the Luria-Delbrück experiment on evolutionary mechanisms and the importance of probabilities in understanding biological data.
Soutenus par l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale du Caire, Ali Abdelhalim Ali (qui reprend les fonctions du professeur Shafia Bedier, décédée au mois de juin 2022), et Françoise Labrique ont codirigé en octobre 2022 une opération de terrain au temp ...
Urbanités familiales a pour objectif d’offrir des logements répondant aux besoins de la famille en plein centre de Paris. Lorsque les Parisiennes et Parisiens fondent une famille, une partie d’entre elles.eux quitte la capitale, à la recherche de condition ...
Background: We previously described the KINSSHIP syndrome, an autosomal dominant disorder associated with intellectual disability (ID), mesomelic dysplasia and horseshoe kidney,caused by de novo variants in the degron of AFF3. Mouse knock-ins and overexpre ...