EPIGENETIC INHERITANCE IN EVOLUTION
E. Jablonka,1, 2 M. J. Lamb 1
1 The Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and of Ideas,
Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv 69978, Israel, and 2 Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, Wallotstrasse 19, D-14193 Berlin, Germany
We discuss the role of cell memory in heredity and evolution. We describe the properties of the epigenetic inheritance
systems (EISs) that underlie cell memory and enable environmentally and developmentally induced cell phenotypes to be transmitted
in cell lineages, and argue that transgenerational epigenetic inheritance is an important and neglected part of heredity. By looking at the
part EISs have played in the evolution of multicellularity, ontogeny, chromosome organization, and the origin of some post-mating isolating
mechanisms, we show how considering the role of epigenetic inheritance can sometimes shed light on major evolutionary processes.
Key words: epialleles, multicellularity, chromosome organization, post-mating isolation, acquired characters
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