PERSPECTIVES 1 2 Rethinking inheritance , yet again : inheritomes , contextomes and dynamic 3 phenotypes

31 In recent years, there have been many calls for an extended evolutionary synthesis, based in part 32 upon growing evidence for non-genetic mechanisms of inheritance i.e. similarities in phenotype 33 between parents and offspring that are not due to shared genes. While there has been an 34 impressive marshalling of evidence for diverse forms of non-genetic inheritance (epigenetic, 35 ecological, behavioural, symbolic), there have been relatively few studies trying to weld the 36 different forms of inheritance into a common conceptual structure, a development that would be 37 important to formalizing elements of the extended evolutionary synthesis. Here, we develop a 38 framework for an extended view of inheritance and introduce some conceptual distinctions that 39 we believe are important to this issue. In this framework, the phenotype is conceived of as a 40 dynamic entity, its state at any point in time resulting from intertwined effects of previous 41 phenotypic state, and of hereditary materials (DNA and otherwise) and environment. We contrast 42 our framework with the standard gene-based view of inheritance, and also discuss our framework 43 in the specific context of recent attempts to accommodate non-genetic inheritance within the 44 framework of classical quantitative genetics and the Price equation. In particular, we believe that 45 the extended view of inheritance and effects on the phenotype developed here is particularly well 46 suited to algorithmic modeling for simulation studies of evolutionary dynamics. 47 48 peer-reviewed) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not . http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/013367 doi: bioRxiv preprint first posted online Jan. 3, 2015;