Evolution in health and medicine Sackler colloquium: Stochastic epigenetic variation as a driving force of development, evolutionary adaptation, and disease.

ABSTRACT: Neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory is based on exquisite selection of phenotypes caused by small genetic variations, which is the basis of quantitative trait contribution to phenotype and disease. Epigenetics is the study of nonsequence-based changes, such as DNA methylation, heritable during cell division. Previous attempts to incorporate epigenetics into evolutionary thinking have focused on Lamarckian inheritance, that is, environmentally directed epigenetic changes. Here, we propose a new non-Lamarckian theory for a role of epigenetics in evolution. We suggest that genetic variants that do not change the mean phenotype could change the variability of phenotype; and this could be mediated epigenetically. This inherited stochastic variation model would provide a mechanism to explain an ep

SUBMITTER: Feinberg AP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2868296 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature