Epigenetics upends natural selection and genetic mutation as the sole
engines of evolution, and offers startling insights into our future
heritable traits.
In the 1700s, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck first described epigenetics to
explain the inheritance of acquired characteristics; however, his theory
was supplanted in the 1800s by Darwin's theory of evolution by natural
selection through heritable genetic mutations. But natural selection
could not adequately explain how rapidly species re-diversified and
repopulated after mass extinctions. Now advances in the study of DNA and
RNA have resurrected epigenetics, which can create radical physical and
physiological changes in subsequent generations by the simple addition
of a single small molecule, thus passing along a propensity for
molecules to attach in the same places in the next generation.
Epigenetics is a complex process, but paleontologist and astrobiologist
Peter Ward breaks it down for general readers, using the epigenetic
paradigm to reexamine how the history of our species--from deep time to
the outbreak of the Black Plague and into the present--has left its mark
on our physiology, behavior, and intelligence. Most alarming are
chapters about epigenetic changes we are undergoing now triggered by
toxins, environmental pollutants, famine, poor nutrition, and
overexposure to violence.
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Lamarck's Revenge* is an eye-opening and provocative exploration of how
traits are inherited, and how outside influences drive what we pass
along to our progeny.
