Biology / Unit 8 Bio 1753 short lesson, about 20 seconds
"Acquired Traits Are Inherited"
Captions available
The idea
Traits an organism acquires during its own lifetime are not passed to its offspring, because only genetic variation in the germline is heritable.
In practice
An athlete's gym-built muscle strength does not appear in offspring's genomes, since building muscle does not alter the athlete's germline DNA.
Where people slip
This is the inheritance-of-acquired-characteristics idea Lamarck proposed before natural selection displaced it as the field's accepted mechanism.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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