In a study of mice forced to inhale large doses of nicotine carried large epigenetics signatures that affected their offspring:
The result might explain why the experiments also found the male mice’s offspring—and grandoffspring—exhibited abnormal behavior and learning impairments.
“Until now, much attention had been focused on the effects of maternal nicotine exposure on their children,” Florida State University’s Pradeep Bhide, who led the study, tells The Boston Globe in an email. “Not much had been known about the effects of paternal smoking on their children and grandchildren. Our study shows that paternal nicotine exposure can be deleterious for the offspring in multiple generations.” Kerry Grens, “Nicotine’s Effects Passed On Through Generations of Mice” at The Scientist
Paper. (open access)
One researcher cautions that, due to the sheer size of the doses of nicotine forced on the mice, “Such studies rarely translate to human smokers.” Not directly anyway.
That said, epigenetics is bad news for Darwinism. It turns out that genes can change during a life form’s lifetime and those changes can be passed on. Natural selection acting on random mutations in the genome (Darwinism) simply cannot be the driving force claimed, any more than Freud or Jung could really explain history on a single principle. They could only explain some things and Darwin can only explain some things. That makes evolution a rather messy history (like all true histories), and not at all welcome to current propagandists.
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See also: Epigenetics is involved in strengthening memory
Anthropologist John Hawks is cool to epigenetics shedding light on evolution. Responses like this from a usually level-headed thinker mainly demonstrate that epigenetics is likely to upset quite a few applecarts.
Peter Ward: Epigenetics explains why there are fewer “species” than we think
and
Epigenetic change: Lamarck, wake up, you’re wanted in the conference room!