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Lamarck argued, as part of his theory of heredity, that a blacksmith's sons inherit the strong muscles he acquires from his work. [1]Lamarckism, also known as Lamarckian inheritance or neo-Lamarckism, [2] is the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime.
Acquired traits are synonymous with acquired characteristics. They are not passed on to offspring through reproduction. The changes that constitute acquired characteristics can have many manifestations and degrees of visibility, but they all have one thing in common. They change a facet of a living organism's function or structure after birth.
Heredity, also called inheritance or biological inheritance, is the passing on of traits from parents to their offspring; either through asexual reproduction or sexual reproduction, the offspring cells or organisms acquire the genetic information of their parents.
The early 19th-century zoologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck suggested the inheritance of acquired characteristics as a mechanism for evolutionary change; adaptive traits acquired by an organism during its lifetime could be inherited by that organism's progeny, eventually causing transmutation of species. [14]
As of late, most of the experimental models utilizing mice and limited observations in humans have only found epigenetically inherited traits that are detrimental to the health of both organisms. [19] These harmful traits range from increased risk of disease, such as cardiovascular disease, to premature death. [19]
Heritability for traits in humans is most frequently estimated by comparing resemblances between twins. "The advantage of twin studies, is that the total variance can be split up into genetic, shared or common environmental, and unique environmental components, enabling an accurate estimation of heritability". [21]
Telegony is a largely discredited theory of heredity holding that offspring can inherit the characteristics of a previous mate of the female parent; thus the child of a woman might partake of traits of a previous sexual partner.
Genetic information cannot pass from soma to germ plasm and on to the next generation. Biologists refer to this concept as the Weismann barrier . [ 2 ] This idea, if true, rules out the inheritance of acquired characteristics as proposed by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck . [ 3 ]