Figure 1.

Epigenetic evolution: In contrast to the conventional way in which evolution is seen from the perspective of the adults to the offspring, this schematic portrays the process as Lamarckian evolution from the perspective of the germline cells interacting with the environment. Over evolutionary time (symbolized by the genomic multiplier “n”, reduced back to “0”, based on First Principles of Physiology in the zygote), (1) the epigenetic marks accumulated from the environment are (2) processed during meiosis, determining which “marks” are assimilated or rejected; (3) The processing of the zygote to form the offspring during embryogenesis further determines whether epigenetic marks are incorporated into the genome or not.