Today’s interesting fact has to do with the past two posts.

What is the difference I was asked, between Epigenetics and Lamarckism or Lysenkoism.

Epigenetics changes the way genes work, sometimes for several generations, but is eventually reversed, and the genes go back to the way they worked. No change to the genetic code is made. These changes allow the following generations to cope with specific changes to the environment. For instance, if a generation or two of an organism is given limited access to nutrients, epigenetic changes allow successive generations to survive by increasing the way they take up nutrients and how they utilise them. When the conditions that cause the change are reversed, eventually the epigenetic changes are reversed.

For both Lamarckism and Lysenkoism it was postulated that changes made to an organism, affects its offspring. Lamarck suggested that cutting off several generations of mice tails, would eventually lead to tailless mice. If this were true, breeds of dogs that had their tails docked for hundreds of years would now not have tails when born, yet those tails still exist.