ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2021
Empirical evidence for epigenetic inheritance driving evolutionary adaptation.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 30 papers.
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Who cites it
30 citing papers in PubMed.
- Epimutations: raw material for evolution?The EMBO journal · 2026Review
- A Chromosome-Level Genome Assembly and Resequencing Data Reveal Low DNA Methylation and Reduced Diversity in the Solitary Bee Pollinator Osmia cornuta.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Multigenerational temperature effects on paternal epigenetic inheritance in European sea bass.Epigenetics & chromatin · 2025Article
- Adaptive epigenetic divergence can facilitate ecological speciation.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Transgenerational phenotypic plasticity of the two-spotted spider mite (Tetranychus urticae Koch) in response to abamectin.Experimental & applied acarology · 2025Article
- Epigenetic mechanisms of rapid-acting antidepressants.Translational psychiatry · 2024Review
- Dissecting the invasion history of Spotted-Wing Drosophila (Drosophila suzukii) in Portugal using genomic data.BMC genomics · 2024Article
- Potential Role of DNA Methylation as a Driver of Plastic Responses to the Environment Across Cells, Organisms, and Populations.Genome biology and evolution · 2024Article
- Epigenetic and Genetic Differentiation Between Coregonus Species Pairs.Genome biology and evolution · 2024Article
- Predator-induced transgenerational plasticity of parental care behaviour in male three-spined stickleback fish across two generations.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- To live or let die? Epigenetic adaptations to climate change-a review.Environmental epigenetics · 2024Review
- Defining adaptation within applied physiology - is there room for improvement?Frontiers in physiology · 2024Article
- Article
- From Environmental Epigenetics to the Inheritance of Acquired Traits: A Historian and Molecular Perspective on an Unnecessary Lamarckian Explanation.Biomolecules · 2023Review
- Article
- Facilitated Adaptation as A Conservation Tool in the Present Climate Change Context: A Methodological Guide.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- Integrated regulation of dopaminergic and epigenetic effectors of neuroprotection in Parkinson's disease models.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- A decade of progress in marine evolutionary biology.Evolutionary applications · 2023Review
- ChIP-seq profiling of H3K4me3 and H3K27me3 in an invasive insect,Frontiers in genetics · 2023Article
- Self-empowerment of life through RNA networks, cells and viruses.F1000Research · 2023Review
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2 authors.
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Abstract
The cellular machinery that regulates gene expression can be self-propagated across cell division cycles and even generations. This renders gene expression states and their associated phenotypes heritable, independently of genetic changes. These phenotypic states, in turn, can be subject to selection and may influence evolutionary adaptation. In this review, we will discuss the molecular basis of epigenetic inheritance, the extent of its transmission and mechanisms of evolutionary adaptation. The current work shows that heritable gene expression can facilitate the process of adaptation through the increase of survival in a novel environment and by enlarging the size of beneficial mutational targets. Moreover, epigenetic control of gene expression enables stochastic switching between different phenotypes in populations that can potentially facilitate adaptation in rapidly fluctuating environments. Ecological studies of the variation of epigenetic markers (e.g. DNA methylation patterns) in wild populations show a potential contribution of this mode of inheritance to local adaptation in nature. However, the extent of the adaptive contribution of the naturally occurring variation in epi-alleles compared to genetic variation remains unclear. This article is part of the theme issue 'How does epigenetics influence the course of evolution?'
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