Lamarck, Waddington and maternal effects

On the centenary of Conrad Hal Waddington's birth, the spotlight has once again come on his attempts in the 1950s to demonstrate inheritance of acquired characters, which he perceived to have given rise to certain callouses in ostrich embryos that could otherwise be caused by aspects of the ostrich's lifestyle. Waddington once remarked that the harshness with which most biologists reject Lamarck's ideas seemed unjustified given his contributions to biology.

Today, I suppose we would talk about the inheritance of acquired characters as maternal effects...

Date of original post on braintickle.blogspot.com: 9/19/2005