Article
Evolution in health and medicine Sackler colloquium: Stochastic epigenetic variation as a driving force of development, evolutionary adaptation, and disease.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America - 26 Jan 2010
Feinberg Andrew P, Irizarry Rafael A
Abstract excerpt
Neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory is based on exquisite selection of phenotypes caused by small genetic variations, which is the basis of quantitative trait contribution to phenotype and disease. Epigenetics is the study of nonsequence-based changes, such as DNA methylation, heritable during cell division. Previous attempts to incorporate epigenetics into evolutionary thinking have focused on Lamarckian...
Topics
- Animals
- Biological Evolution
- DNA Methylation
- Disease Susceptibility
- Epigenesis, Genetic
- Genetic Variation
- Humans
- Mice
- Organ Specificity
- Stochastic Processes