The Lamarckian chicken and the Darwinian egg
Yitzhak Pilpel 1 and Oded Rechavi 2
Corresponding authors: Yitzhak Pilpel pilpel@weizmann.ac.il - Oded Rechavi odedrechavi@gmail.com
1 Department of Molecular genetics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel
2 Department of Neurobiology, Wise Faculty of Life Sciences and Sagol School, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel
Biology Direct 2015, 10:34 doi:10.1186/s13062-015-0062-9
The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at:
Received: 29 March 2015 Accepted: 22 June 2015 Published: 1 July 2015
© 2015 Pilpel and Rechavi.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
Abstract
“Which came first, the Chicken or the Egg?” We suggest this question is not a paradox. The Modern Synthesis envisions speciation through genetic changes in germ cells via random mutations, an “Egg first” scenario, but perhaps epigenetic inheritance mechanisms can transmit adaptive changes initiated in the soma (“Chicken first”).
Reviewers
The article was reviewed by Dr. Eugene Koonin, Dr. Itai Yanai, Dr. Laura Landweber.
Keywords: Evolution; Darwinian Evolution; Lamarckian Evolution; Modern Synthesis; Weismann Barrier; Epigenetic Inheritance; Transgenerational RNA Interference
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