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Transgenerational epigenetic inheritance: adaptation, genome stability and evolutionTransgenerational epigenetic effects likely have wide-ranging implications for human health, biological adaptation and evolution, however their mechanisms remain poorly understood. Recently it has been demonstrated that germline nuclear RNA and chromatin pathways are involved in stable transgenerational gene silencing in C. elegans and D. melanogaster.We hypothesise that transgenerational epigenetic inheritance (TEI) observed in mammals is the consequence of interactions between repetitive and genic parts of the genome mediated by small RNA. We will investigate the mechanisms underlying TEI using M. musculus as a model. We aim to determine if and how TEI provides an environmental memory (“Lamarckism”) and examine its implications for genome stability and evolution. |