| Inheritance Of Acquired Characters |
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Long after the triumph of the Central Dogma Of Molecular Biology , which is often equated with the idea that the DNA of a cell alone determines its fate, it was the fact that the cell plasm of an egg cell, whose composition can influence the early stages of a developing embryo, is in part derived from the diploid cells of the parent, which will have a different genotype, that inspired researchers to look for examples where this is important. In a separate development, it was realised in Quantitative Genetics that models that included a Maternal Effect made more accurate predictions. Some maternal effects are acquired traits; namely, when the relevant parent's and offspring's trait are the same. The original idea of inheritance of acquired characters has survived as a proverb, "use it or lose it". EVIDENCE In the 1920s, Harvard University researcher William McDougall , studied the abilities of Rat s to correctly solve mazes. He found that children of rats that had learned the maze were able to run it faster. The first rats would get it wrong 165 times before being able to run it perfectly each time, but after a few generations it was down to 20. McDougall attributed this to some sort of Lamarckian Evolution ary process. GENETIC DISPROOF There are many formulations of the genetic disproof, but all have roughly the same structure as the following: #Acquired traits do not affect an organism's Genome . #Only the Genome is passed to the offspring. #Therefore, acquired traits cannot be passed to the offspring. While this proof may be logically Valid , it suffers from the Material Fallacy of Begging The Question , since no one who believes in ''inheritance of acquired characters'' would believe both assumptions. SEE ALSO |
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