scholarly journals Role of environmentally induced epigenetic transgenerational inheritance in evolutionary biology: Unified Evolution Theory

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael K Skinner ◽  
Eric E Nilsson
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Phenotypic Variation ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Genetic Alterations ◽  
Modern Synthesis ◽  
Darwinian Evolution ◽  
Evolution Theory ◽  
Transgenerational Inheritance ◽  
Extended Evolutionary Synthesis

Abstract The current evolutionary biology theory primarily involves genetic alterations and random DNA sequence mutations to generate the phenotypic variation required for Darwinian natural selection to act. This neo-Darwinian evolution is termed the Modern Evolution Synthesis and has been the primary paradigm for nearly 100 years. Although environmental factors have a role in neo-Darwinian natural selection, Modern Evolution Synthesis does not consider environment to impact the basic molecular processes involved in evolution. An Extended Evolutionary Synthesis has recently developed that extends the modern synthesis to consider non-genetic processes. Over the past few decades, environmental epigenetics research has been demonstrated to regulate genetic processes and directly generate phenotypic variation independent of genetic sequence alterations. Therefore, the environment can on a molecular level through non-genetic (i.e. epigenetic) mechanisms directly influence phenotypic variation, genetic variation, inheritance and adaptation. This direct action of the environment to alter phenotype that is heritable is a neo-Lamarckian concept that can facilitate neo-Darwinian (i.e. Modern Synthesis) evolution. The integration of genetics, epigenetics, Darwinian theory, Lamarckian concepts, environment, and epigenetic inheritance provides a paradigm shift in evolution theory. The role of environmental-induced epigenetic transgenerational inheritance in evolution is presented to describe a more unified theory of evolutionary biology.

scholarly journals The structure of evolutionary theory: Beyond Neo-Darwinism, Neo-Lamarckism and biased historical narratives about the Modern Synthesis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Svensson
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Neutral Theory ◽  
Modern Synthesis ◽  
Third Way ◽  
Extended Evolutionary Synthesis ◽  
Stephen Jay Gould ◽  
Post Synthesis ◽  
Lasting Influence

The last decades have seen frequent calls for a more extended evolutionary synthesis (EES) that will supposedly overcome the limitations in the current evolutionary framework with its intellectual roots in the Modern Synthesis (MS). Some radical critics even want to entirely abandon the current evolutionary framework, claiming that the MS (often erroneously labelled “Neo-Darwinism”) is outdated, and will soon be replaced by an entirely new framework, such as the Third Way of Evolution (TWE). Such criticisms are not new, but have repeatedly re-surfaced every decade since the formation of the MS, and were particularly articulated by developmental biologist Conrad Waddington and paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. Waddington, Gould and later critics argued that the MS was too narrowly focused on genes and natural selection, and that it ignored developmental processes, epigenetics, paleontology and macroevolutionary phenomena. More recent critics partly recycle these old arguments and argue that non-genetic inheritance, niche construction, phenotypic plasticity and developmental bias necessitate major revision of evolutionary theory. Here I discuss these supposed challenges, taking a historical perspective and tracing these arguments back to Waddington and Gould. I dissect the old arguments by Waddington, Gould and more recent critics that the MS was excessively gene centric and became increasingly “hardened” over time and narrowly focused on natural selection. Recent critics have consciously or unconsciously exaggerated the long-lasting influence of the MS on contemporary evolutionary biology and have underestimated many post-Synthesis developments, particularly Neutral Theory and evolutionary quantitative genetics. Critics have also painted a biased picture of the MS as a more monolithic research tradition than it ever was, and have downplayed the pluralistic nature of contemporary evolutionary biology, particularly the long-lasting influence of Sewall Wright with his emphasis on gene interactions and stochasticity. Finally, I outline and visualize the conceptually split landscape of contemporary evolutionary biology, with four different stably coexisting analytical frameworks: adaptationism, mutationism, neutralism and selectionism. I suggest that the field can accommodate the challenges raised by critics, although structuralism (“EvoDevo”) and macroevolution remain to be conceptually integrated within mainstream evolutionary theory.

Challenging the Modern Synthesis

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Modern Synthesis ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Original Essays ◽  
New Biology ◽  
Conceptual Foundations ◽  
Orthodox View

Since its origin in the early 20th century, the modern synthesis theory of evolution has grown to represent the orthodox view on the process of organic evolution. It is a powerful and successful theory. Its defining features include the prominence it accords to genes in the explanation of development and inheritance, and the role of natural selection as the cause of adaptation. Since the advent of the 21st century, however, the modern synthesis has been subject to repeated and sustained challenges. In the last two decades, evolutionary biology has witnessed unprecedented growth in the understanding of those processes that underwrite the development of organisms and the inheritance of characters. The empirical advances usher in challenges to the conceptual foundations of evolutionary theory. Many current commentators charge that the new biology of the 21st century calls for a revision, extension, or wholesale rejection of the modern synthesis theory of evolution. Defenders of the modern synthesis maintain that the theory can accommodate the exciting new advances in biology, without forfeiting its central precepts. The original essays collected in this volume—by evolutionary biologists, philosophers of science, and historians of biology—survey and assess the various challenges to the modern synthesis arising from the new biology of the 21st century. Taken together, the essays cover a spectrum of views, from those that contend that the modern synthesis can rise to the challenges of the new biology, with little or no revision required, to those that call for the abandonment of the modern synthesis.

scholarly journals Evolutionary biology today and the call for an extended synthesis

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 20160145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas J. Futuyma
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Epigenetic Inheritance ◽  
Reaction Norm ◽  
Evolutionary Synthesis ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Extended Evolutionary Synthesis ◽  
Extended Synthesis ◽  
Proximate Causation

Evolutionary theory has been extended almost continually since the evolutionary synthesis (ES), but except for the much greater importance afforded genetic drift, the principal tenets of the ES have been strongly supported. Adaptations are attributable to the sorting of genetic variation by natural selection, which remains the only known cause of increase in fitness. Mutations are not adaptively directed, but as principal authors of the ES recognized, the material (structural) bases of biochemistry and development affect the variety of phenotypic variations that arise by mutation and recombination. Against this historical background, I analyse major propositions in the movement for an ‘extended evolutionary synthesis’. ‘Niche construction' is a new label for a wide variety of well-known phenomena, many of which have been extensively studied, but (as with every topic in evolutionary biology) some aspects may have been understudied. There is no reason to consider it a neglected ‘process’ of evolution. The proposition that phenotypic plasticity may engender new adaptive phenotypes that are later genetically assimilated or accommodated is theoretically plausible; it may be most likely when the new phenotype is not truly novel, but is instead a slight extension of a reaction norm already shaped by natural selection in similar environments. However, evolution in new environments often compensates for maladaptive plastic phenotypic responses. The union of population genetic theory with mechanistic understanding of developmental processes enables more complete understanding by joining ultimate and proximate causation; but the latter does not replace or invalidate the former. Newly discovered molecular phenomena have been easily accommodated in the past by elaborating orthodox evolutionary theory, and it appears that the same holds today for phenomena such as epigenetic inheritance. In several of these areas, empirical evidence is needed to evaluate enthusiastic speculation. Evolutionary theory will continue to be extended, but there is no sign that it requires emendation.

New Frontiers

2021 ◽  
pp. 7-27
Author(s):  
Gino Cattani ◽  
Mariano Mastrogiorgio
Keyword(s):  
Technological Innovation ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Significant Influence ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Innovation Process ◽  
Punctuated Equilibrium ◽  
Darwinian Evolution ◽  
Profound Impact ◽  
Equilibrium Speciation

Evolutionary thinking has grown significantly and has had a profound impact on various fields such as economics, strategy, and technological innovation. An important paradigm that underlies the evolutionary theory of innovation is neo-Darwinian evolution. According to this paradigm, evolution is gradualist and is based on the mechanisms of variation, selection, and retention. Starting from the 1970s, new theoretical advancements in evolutionary biology have recognized the central role of punctuated equilibrium, speciation, and exaptation in evolution and of Woesian dynamics. However, despite their significant influence in evolutionary biology, these advancements have been reflected only partially in evolutionary approaches to economics, strategy, and technological innovation. This chapter reviews these advancements and explores their key implications for innovation, such as the role of serendipity and unpre-stateability leading to disequilibrium in economics systems, and the importance of adopting an option-based logic during the innovation process.

Evolution theory and the future of humanity

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Wills
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Communication Skills ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Skin Pigmentation ◽  
Homo Erectus ◽  
Skin Colour ◽  
Evolution Theory ◽  
The Future ◽  
Genetic Level ◽  
High Level

No field of science has cast more light on both the past and the future of our species than evolutionary biology. Recently, the pace of new discoveries about how we have evolved has increased (Culotta and Pennisi, 2005). It is now clear that we are less unique than we used to think. Genetic and palaeontological evidence is now accumulating that hominids with a high level of intelligence, tool-making ability, and probably communication skills have evolved independently more than once. They evolved in Africa (our own ancestors), in Europe (the ancestors of the Neanderthals) and in Southeast Asia (the remarkable ‘hobbits’, who may be miniaturized and highly acculturated Homo erectus). It is also becoming clear that the genes that contribute to the characteristics of our species can be found and that the histories of these genes can be understood. Comparisons of entire genomes have shown that genes involved in brain function have evolved more quickly in hominids than in more distantly related primates. The genetic differences among human groups can now be investigated. Characters that we tend to think of as extremely important markers enabling us to distinguish among different human groups now turn out to be understandable at the genetic level, and their genetic history can be traced. Recently a single allelic difference between Europeans and Africans has been found (Lamason et al., 2005). This functional allelic difference accounts for about a third of the differences in skin pigmentation in these groups. Skin colour differences, in spite of the great importance they have assumed in human societies, are the result of natural selection acting on a small number of genes that are likely to have no effects beyond their influence on skin colour itself. How do these and other recent findings from fields ranging from palaeontology to molecular biology fit into present-day evolution theory, and what light do they cast on how our species is likely to evolve in the future? I will introduce this question by examining briefly how evolutionary change takes place.

Evolution: Medicine’s most basic science

2020 ◽  
pp. 39-42
Author(s):  
Randolph M. Nesse ◽  
Richard Dawkins
Keyword(s):  
Population Genetics ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Basic Science ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Phylogenetic Trees ◽  
The Body ◽  
Clinical Implications ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
The Cost

The role of evolutionary biology as a basic science for medicine is expanding rapidly. Some evolutionary methods are already widely applied in medicine, such as population genetics and methods for analysing phylogenetic trees. Newer applications come from seeking evolutionary as well as proximate explanations for disease. Traditional medical research is restricted to proximate studies of the body’s mechanism, but separate evolutionary explanations are needed for why natural selection has left many aspects of the body vulnerable to disease. There are six main possibilities: mismatch, infection, constraints, trade-offs, reproduction at the cost of health, and adaptive defences. Like other basic sciences, evolutionary biology has limited direct clinical implications, but it provides essential research methods, encourages asking new questions that foster a deeper understanding of disease, and provides a framework that organizes the facts of medicine.

scholarly journals Cancer and intercellular cooperation

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (10) ◽  
pp. 170470 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marta Bertolaso ◽  
Anna Maria Dieli
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Darwinian Evolution ◽  
Individual Organism ◽  
Major Transitions ◽  
Somatic Evolution ◽  
Selection Processes ◽  
Intercellular Cooperation ◽  
Multicellular Organisms ◽  
Different Levels

The major transitions approach in evolutionary biology has shown that the intercellular cooperation that characterizes multicellular organisms would never have emerged without some kind of multilevel selection. Relying on this view, the Evolutionary Somatic view of cancer considers cancer as a breakdown of intercellular cooperation and as a loss of the balance between selection processes that take place at different levels of organization (particularly single cell and individual organism). This seems an elegant unifying framework for healthy organism, carcinogenesis, tumour proliferation, metastasis and other phenomena such as ageing. However, the gene-centric version of Darwinian evolution, which is often adopted in cancer research, runs into empirical problems: proto-tumoural and tumoural features in precancerous cells that would undergo ‘natural selection’ have proved hard to demonstrate; cells are radically context-dependent, and some stages of cancer are poorly related to genetic change. Recent perspectives propose that breakdown of intercellular cooperation could depend on ‘fields’ and other higher-level phenomena, and could be even mutations independent. Indeed, the field would be the context, allowing (or preventing) genetic mutations to undergo an intra-organism process analogous to natural selection. The complexities surrounding somatic evolution call for integration between multiple incomplete frameworks for interpreting intercellular cooperation and its pathologies.

scholarly journals The Information Continuum Hypothesis of Evolution

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rasmus Skern-Mauritzen ◽  
Thomas Nygaard Mikkelsen
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Continuum Hypothesis ◽  
Modern Synthesis ◽  
Evolutionary Synthesis ◽  
Extended Evolutionary Synthesis ◽  
Epigenetic Markers ◽  
Epigenetic Information ◽  
The Devil

Life is information dancing through time, embedded in matter and shaped by natural selection. Few biologists or philosophers concerned with evolution would object to this description. This apparent accord could be taken to indicate universal agreement on the forces shaping evolution; but the devil is in the details and disagreement is apparent if one looks behind the curtain. The decade strong prevalent paradigm of the Modern Synthesis holds the position that evolution happens by random changes and natural selection acting on genomic inheritance. But there is a new kid on the block; the proponents of an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis argue that inheritance is more than genomes and includes epigenetic information, niche constructs (ranging from the meerkats dens to humans railroads) and culture among other factors – and that these factors are both inheritance and a force shaping evolution. Here we introduce The Information Continuum Hypothesis of Evolution; a conceptual framework that focus on the inherited information rather than the diverse representations this inherited information may have (DNA, RNA, epigenetic markers, proteins, culture etc.). As a tool we introduce the concept “hereditome” to describe the combined inherited representations of information. We believe this framework may help bridge the apparent gap between the Modern Synthesis and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis.

scholarly journals Mendel and Darwin: untangling a persistent enigma

Heredity ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 124 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-273
Author(s):  
Daniel J. Fairbanks
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Darwinian Evolution ◽  
Heritable Variation ◽  
Outright Rejection ◽  
Scientific Environment ◽  
Final Letter

AbstractMendel and Darwin were contemporaries, with much overlap in their scientifically productive years. Available evidence shows that Mendel knew much about Darwin, whereas Darwin knew nothing of Mendel. Because of the fragmentary nature of this evidence, published inferences regarding Mendel’s views on Darwinian evolution are contradictory and enigmatic, with claims ranging from enthusiastic acceptance to outright rejection. The objective of this review is to examine evidence from Mendel’s published and private writings on evolution and Darwin, and the influence of the scientific environment in which he was immersed. Much of this evidence lies in Mendel’s handwritten annotations in his copies of Darwin’s books, which this review scrutinises in detail. Darwin’s writings directly influenced Mendel’s classic 1866 paper, and his letters to Nägeli. He commended and criticised Darwin on specific issues pertinent to his research, including the provisional hypothesis of pangenesis, the role of pollen in fertilisation, and the influence of “conditions of life” on heritable variation. In his final letter to Nägeli, Mendel proposed a Darwinian scenario for natural selection using the same German term for “struggle for existence” as in his copies of Darwin’s books. His published and private scientific writings are entirely objective, devoid of polemics or religious allusions, and address evolutionary questions in a manner consistent with that of his scientific contemporaries. The image that emerges of Mendel is of a meticulous scientist who accepted the tenets of Darwinian evolution, while privately pinpointing aspects of Darwin’s views of inheritance that were not supported by Mendel’s own experiments.

scholarly journals Why an extended evolutionary synthesis is necessary

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 20170015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerd B. Müller
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Evolutionary Process ◽  
Evolutionary Developmental Biology ◽  
Standard Theory ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Ecological Interactions ◽  
Extended Evolutionary Synthesis ◽  
Cultural Conditions ◽  
Theoretical Synthesis

Since the last major theoretical integration in evolutionary biology—the modern synthesis (MS) of the 1940s—the biosciences have made significant advances. The rise of molecular biology and evolutionary developmental biology, the recognition of ecological development, niche construction and multiple inheritance systems, the ‘-omics’ revolution and the science of systems biology, among other developments, have provided a wealth of new knowledge about the factors responsible for evolutionary change. Some of these results are in agreement with the standard theory and others reveal different properties of the evolutionary process. A renewed and extended theoretical synthesis, advocated by several authors in this issue, aims to unite pertinent concepts that emerge from the novel fields with elements of the standard theory. The resulting theoretical framework differs from the latter in its core logic and predictive capacities. Whereas the MS theory and its various amendments concentrate on genetic and adaptive variation in populations, the extended framework emphasizes the role of constructive processes, ecological interactions and systems dynamics in the evolution of organismal complexity as well as its social and cultural conditions. Single-level and unilinear causation is replaced by multilevel and reciprocal causation. Among other consequences, the extended framework overcomes many of the limitations of traditional gene-centric explanation and entails a revised understanding of the role of natural selection in the evolutionary process. All these features stimulate research into new areas of evolutionary biology.

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