Commentary: Past, present, and future of epigenetics applied to livestock breeding — Hard versus Soft Lamarckian Inheritance Mechanisms
نویسنده
چکیده
A commentary on Past, present, and future of epigenetics applied to livestock breeding The article by González-Recio et al. (2015) claims to " review the concept of Lamarckian inheritance and the use of the term epigenetics in the field of animal genetics. " I began reading with interest as I am involved in selective livestock improvement (Williamson et al., 2011) using the ancestral haplotype approach to establish associations with desirable beef quality traits (Dawkins, 2015). I was curious where the epigenetics field was situated in this regard. However, in the introductory section, " The Old Ideas, " I considered their comments on an earlier book of mine (Steele et al., 1998) were incorrect. Further, the rest of their article had, in my view, a major omission on what constitutes Weismann's Doctrine and the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology (below). Having said this the review by Gonzalez-Recio et al is an otherwise thoughtful and informative article on the application of transgenerational epigenetic ideas and phenomena to livestock improvement. Indeed I have no argument with accurate recounting of the difficulties documenting " hard " epigenetic inheritance in mammals (the transmission of an epigenetic character beyond three generations). Understanding the genetic rules for how a reversible (erasable and thus " soft ") epigenetic trait can be made into a " hard " genetic transmission process involving modifications to germline DNA sequences, is a worthy research goal. Given the current state of immunological knowledge I am persuaded by the data that " hard " types of soma-to-germline transfer are ongoing at very high frequency in human immune system germlines, and, by extension, other mammalian germlines (below). I have been developing Lamarckian soma-to-germline concepts and reverse transcriptase (RT)-based feedback mechanisms— " hard "
منابع مشابه
Past, present, and future of epigenetics applied to livestock breeding
This article reviews the concept of Lamarckian inheritance and the use of the term epigenetics in the field of animal genetics. Epigenetics was first coined by Conrad Hal Waddington (1905-1975), who derived the term from the Aristotelian word epigenesis. There exists some controversy around the word epigenetics and its broad definition. It includes any modification of the expression of genes du...
متن کاملResponse: Commentary: Past, present and future of epigenetics applied to livestock breeding
Following our recent Review article (González-Recio et al., 2015), we received correspondence by Steele (2016). We thank Dr. Steele for his comments, which provide a thorough review of his work on human immunology, which has persuaded him that " hard types of soma-to-germline transfer are ongoing at very high frequency in human immune system germlines. " His and other researchers' studies on re...
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عنوان ژورنال:
دوره 7 شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 2016