Epigenetics as forerunner of design?
We are in the midst of a paradigm shift in our understanding of how evolution can act…on evolution, yielding mechanisms that allow both adaptation and heritability within the course of a lifetime. And such paradigm shifts almost always have societal consequences. Manel Esteller shows that epigenetics also impacts the “dark genome” in a way that may improve cancer diagnostics. So says Andrew D. Ellington in “Epigenetics and Society: Did Erasmus Darwin foreshadow the tweaking of his grandson’s paradigm?”(The Scientist, Volume 25 | Issue 3 | Page 14). He means, roughly, a revival of Lamarckism, the idea that life forms can acquire genetic information from their environment as well as through Darwin’s natural selection acting on random mutation. Why that was Read More ›