[celmak]

Yet epigenetics suggests this isn't the whole story. If what happens to you during your lifetime – living in a stress-inducing henhouse, say, or overeating in northern Sweden – can affect how your genes express themselves in future generations, the absolutely simple version of natural selection begins to look questionable."

Hmmm...

[Tucker39]

Help me out here. My one and only daughter was born when I was 26 years old and in svelte, trim and fit condition. The genetics I passed on to her were the best they could ever be.

In subsequent years I kind-of let down my guard, hit the smorgasbord a little too often, worked in a fairly high pressure business and never got more than 6 hours sleep a night in the last 50 years. Possible detrimental influences on my genes.

Please tell me in what way that will affect my grandchildren.
Thanks

[metmom]

What if Darwin's theory of evolution – or, at least, Darwin's theory of evolution as most of us learned it at school and believe we understand it – is, in crucial respects, not entirely accurate?

Such talk, naturally, is liable to drive evolutionary biologists into a rage, or, in the case of Richard Dawkins, into even more of a rage than usual. They have a point: nobody wants to provide ammunition to the proponents of creationism or "intelligent design", and it's true that few of the studies now coming to public prominence are all that revolutionary to the experts.

But, but, but,.... what about consensus? And peer review?

[metmom]

I recall hearing recently, in the last couple years, that if a woman smokes during her pregnancy, that her grandchildren, who had never been exposed to the cigarette smoke directly, stood a greater than average chance of developing asthma.

My m-i-l, who is not a Christian or creationist, was concerned about this and felt bad thinking that something she did may have contributed to the potential for asthma in our kids.

[metmom]

The Swedish chicken study was one of several recent breakthroughs in the youthful field of epigenetics, which primarily studies the epigenome, the protective package of proteins around which genetic material – strands of DNA – is wrapped. The epigenome plays a crucial role in determining which genes actually express themselves in a creature's traits: in effect, it switches certain genes on or off, or turns them up or down in intensity. It isn't news that the environment can alter the epigenome; what's news is that those changes can be inherited. And this doesn't, of course, apply only to chickens: some of the most striking findings come from research involving humans.

What's interesting, is that in light of how environment can affect genes to generations down the road, much of what God instituted in the Law, begins to make a lot more sense. As do the continual references to curses being passed down to the third and fourth generations.

[metmom]

But Lamarck was scorned for a much more general apparent mistake: the idea that lifestyle might be able to influence heredity. "Today," notes David Shenk, "any high school student knows that genes are passed on unchanged from parent to child, and to the next generation and the next. Lifestyle cannot alter heredity. Except now it turns out that it can . . ."

Time to rewrite the biology textbooks.