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What is "epi" about epigenetics?
1Department of Philosophy, University of California-Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616-8673, USA. jrgriesemer@ucdavis.edu
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
|January 28, 2003
Abstract:
What counts as epigenetic depends on what counts as genetic. It is argued that Weismannism, the doctrine of genetic continuity and somatic discontinuity, is the basis for an overly inclusive concept of epigenetics as every inherited resource "beyond the genes." An alternative theoretical perspective, the "reproducer" concept, is introduced to facilitate analysis of multiple inheritance systems without labeling all nongenetic inheritance "epigenetic."