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Epigenetics: ambiguities and implications

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Abstract

Everyone has heard of ‘epigenetics’, but the term means different things to different researchers. Four important contemporary meanings are outlined in this paper. Epigenetics in its various senses has implications for development, heredity, and evolution, and also for medicine. Concerning development, it cements the vision of a reactive genome strongly coupled to its environment. Concerning heredity, both narrowly epigenetic and broader ‘exogenetic’ systems of inheritance play important roles in the construction of phenotypes. A thoroughly epigenetic model of development and evolution was Waddington’s aim when he introduced the term ‘epigenetics’ in the 1940s, but it has taken the modern development of molecular epigenetics to realize this aim. In the final sections of the paper we briefly outline some further implications of epigenetics for medicine and for the nature/nurture debate.

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Notes

  1. We owe this point to one of the anonymous reviewers.

  2. Jablonka and Lamb’s identification of epigenetic inheritance with the ‘Lamarckian’ inheritance of acquired characters is not unproblematic. Some scientists insist that the term Lamarckian inheritance should be restricted to the inheritance of phenotypic (somatic) characters that are acquired during development (Hall 2011, p. 11).

  3. Even non-heritable epigenetic variation can have an impact on evolution. Through its role in gene expression, this variation differentially changes the survival and reproduction of an individual organism and therefore enables other factors to be transmitted, which thanks to the epigenetic variant can therefore spread in the population (we owe this point to a comment by one of the reviewers).

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Funding

This project/publication was made possible through the support of a grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation: Causal Foundations of Biological Information TWCF0063/AB37. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Templeton World Charity Foundation.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, 2109, Australia

    Karola Stotz

  2. Department of Philosophy and Charles Perkins Centre, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia

    Paul Griffiths

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Correspondence to Karola Stotz.

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This article is part of the topical collection "Sketches of a conceptual history of epigenesis".

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Stotz, K., Griffiths, P. Epigenetics: ambiguities and implications. HPLS 38, 22 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-016-0121-2

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