Inheritance as Evolved and Evolving Physiological Processes
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Inheritance as Evolved and Evolving Physiological Processes Francesca Merlin1 · Livio Riboli‑Sasco1,2 Received: 25 April 2019 / Accepted: 15 October 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract In this paper, we adopt a physiological perspective in order to produce an intelligible overview of biological transmission in all its diversity. This allows us to put forward the analysis of transmission mechanisms, with the aim of complementing the usual focus on transmitted factors. We underline the importance of the structural, dynamical, and functional features of transmission mechanisms throughout organisms’ life cycles in order to answer to the question of what is passed on across generations, how and why. On this basis, we propose a vision of biological transmission as networks of heterogeneous physiological mechanisms, not restricted to transmission mechanisms stricto sensu. They prove to be themselves suited candidates for evolutionary explanations. They are processes both necessary for evolution to happen and resulting themselves from evolution. This leads us to call for a strategy of endogenization to account for transmission, and more specifically inheritance, as evolved and evolving physiological mechanisms. Keywords Inheritance · Non-genetic transmission · Transmission mechanisms · Physiological perspective · Evolutionary dynamics · Extended inheritance · Strategy of endogenization
1 Introduction For decades, the concept of heredity has been associated with the transmission of genetic material (in the sense of the linear sequence of DNA). On the basis of evidence for parent-offspring resemblance due to non-genetic forms of transmission, there is at present a relatively large consensus in the scientific community concerning the need to extend this concept. Since the 1990s, and in the context of this
* Francesca Merlin francesca.merlin@univ‑paris1.fr 1
IHPST-Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne & CNRS, 13 rue du Four, 75006 Paris, France
2
Atelier des Jours à Venir, 97 allée Théodore Monod, 64210 Bidart, France
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debate, many new definitions have been suggested (e.g., Griffiths and Gray 1994; Sterelny et al 1996; Merlin 2017; Uller and Heläntera 2017; Mossio and Pontarotti 2019) and various ways of categorizing forms of heredity have been put forward with respect to the nature of the transmitted content (genetic, epigenetic, parental, ecological or environmental, cultural, or symbolic; e.g., Jablonka and Lamb 2005; Danchin et al 2011; Bonduriansky and Day 2018). The majority of these accounts fall within the statistical framework of population genetics—indeed, they are mainly oriented towards the analysis of parent-offspring patterns of resemblance, and discuss heredity in terms of transmitted factors.1 In this paper, we adopt a different perspective to address the question of the parent-offspring relation—that is, what is passed on across generations, how it is passed on, and why. Firstly, we set aside the issue of defining heredity—that is, the ques
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