In the first study of its kind, scientists have detected evidence that DNA may not be the only carrier of heritable information; a secondary molecular mechanism called epigenetics may also account for ...

The year was 1900. Three European botanists — one Dutch, one German and one Austrian — all reported results from breeding experiments in plants. Each claimed that they had independently discovered ...

Between 1856 and 1863, an Austrian monk named Gregor Mendel performed a series of pioneering experiments by breeding plants. Using garden peas (Pisum sativum), he demonstrated that traits such as seed ...

Studies suggest that epigenetics allows some learned adaptive responses to be passed down to new generations. The question is how. As a biological concept, the inheritance of acquired characteristics ...