The peculiar genetics of the ribosomal DNA blurs the boundaries of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance

摘要

Our goal is to draw a linehypothetical in its totality but experimentally supported at each individual stepconnecting the ribosomal DNA and the phenomenon of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance of induced phenotypes. The reasonableness of this hypothesis is offset by its implication, that many (or most) (or all) of the cases of induced-and-inherited phenotypes that are seen to persist for generations are instead unmapped induced polymorphisms in the ribosomal DNA, and thus are the consequence of the peculiar and enduringly fascinating genetics of the highly transcribed repeat DNA structure at that locus.