Epigenetic learning in non-neural organisms.

Learning involves a usually adaptive response to an input (an external stimulus or the organism’s own behaviour) in which the input-response relation is memorized; some physical traces of the relation persist and can later be the basis of a more effective response. Using toy models we show that this characterization applies not only to the paradigmatic case of neural learning, but also to cellular responses that are based on epigenetic mechanisms of cell memory. The models suggest that the research agenda of epigenetics needs to be expanded.

Soft inheritance: challenging the modern synthesis: [review]

This paper presents some of the recent challenges to the Modern Synthesis of evolutionary theory, which has dominated evolutionary thinking for the last sixty years. The focus of the paper is the challenge of soft inheritance - the idea that variations that arise during development can be inherited. There is ample evidence showing that phenotypic variations that are independent of variations in DNA sequence, and targeted DNA changes that are guided by epigenetic control systems, are important sources of hereditary variation, and hence can contribute to evolutionary changes. Furthermore, under certain conditions, the mechanisms underlying epigenetic inheritance can also lead to saltational changes that reorganize the epigenome. These discoveries are clearly incompatible with the tenets of the Modern Synthesis, which denied any significant role for Lamarckian and saltational processes. In view of the data that support soft inheritance, as well as other challenges to the Modern Synthesis, it is concluded that that synthesis no longer offers a satisfactory theoretical framework for evolutionary biology.