Biological inheritance
From Wikinfo
Biological inheritance is the process by which an offspring cell or organism acquires or becomes predisposed to characteristics of its parent cell or organism. Through inheritance, variations exhibited by individuals can accumulate and cause a species to evolve.
Mechanisms of inheritance:
- Genetic inheritance results from DNA replication and cell division.
- Epigenetic inheritance results from, among other things, DNA modifications such as gene silencing.
The study of biological inheritance is called genetics, which includes also epigenetics.
References
- Adapted from the Wikipedia article, "Biological_inheritance" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_inheritance, used under the GNU Free Documentation License
