ANOTHER direct challenge has been posed to one of the cornerstones of biology, Mendel’s laws of inheritance.
Mendel’s laws underlie almost all of genetics. They state, for example, that it is the combination of dominant and recessive genes inherited from the parents that dictates an offspring’s characteristics.
In the main, this is true, but examples of inherited traits are being discovered that deviate from this rule. These “epigenetic” effects are caused not by genes themselves, but by inherited factors that affect gene expression in later generations. The latest such effect, described by a team led by Minoo Rassoulzadegan at Sophia…
