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The Challenge of Epigenetic Inheritance to Genetics as We Know It| old_uid | 1034 |
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| title | The Challenge of Epigenetic Inheritance to Genetics as We Know It |
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| start_date | 2006/04/06 |
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| schedule | 14h-16h |
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| online | no |
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| summary | Waddington’s term “epigenetics” has been taken as a synonym for development, but the term has more recently been invoked to refer to two subsets of the causal mechanisms mediating development, namely regulation [of gene expression] and cellular inheritance. Here, in both its new uses, the term epigenetic is not the name of a discipline, not a noun, but an adjective, a modifier delineating a subset of disciplines already clearly in existence, namely, the studies of regulation and of inheritance. And here, the answer to the question, What is epi about epigenetic regulation [of gene expression], is that it is regulation outside, or over and beyond, genetic regulation [of gene expression], and what is epi about epigenetic inheritance is that it is inheritance outside, or over and beyond, genetic inheritance. There is however a certain peculiarity to each of these designations: in the one case (epigenetic regulation), we seem hardly to need the modifier (isn’t the regulation of gene expression, virtually by definition, epigenetic?), and in the other case (epigenetic inheritance), if we take genetic to mean heritable, does not the modifier epigenetic become oxymoronic ? |
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| responsibles | Barberousse, Morange, Pradeu |
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