This outstanding new book takes us on a journey into the relatively new field of epigenetics.
In the early nineteenth century, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, a predecessor to Darwin, argued that acquired characteristics were passed on by species to their children – known as epigenetics, however, Darwin came along and his teaching that acquired characteristics are never passed on prevailed (more likely, there’s a genetic variation that has a survival advantage, and it’s possessor produces more offspring, and this slowly drives evolutionary change).
Now, advances in the study of DNA show that epigenetics is one of the engines of evolution. It’s a complex process, and in this book general readers can get an idea of how it works, and we’re introduced to the fierce debate over the extent of it’s role in evolution.
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