Cooperation between genetic mutations and phenotypic plasticity can bypass the Weismann barrier: The cooperative model of evolution

Abstract

The Weismann barrier, or the impossibility of inheritance of acquired traits, comprises a foundation of modern biology, and it has been a major obstacle in establishing the connection between evolution and ontogenesis. We propose the cooperative model based on the assumption that evolution is achieved by a cooperation between genetic mutations and acquired changes (phenotypic plasticity). It is also assumed in this model that natural selection operates on phenotypes, rather than genotypes, of individuals, and that the relationship between phenotypes and genotypes is one-to-many. In the simulations based on these assumptions, individuals exhibited phenotypic changes in response to an environmental change, corresponding multiple genetic mutations were increasingly accumulated in individuals in the population, and phenotypic plasticity was gradually replaced with genetic mutations. This result suggests that Lamarck's law of use and disuse can effectively hold without conflicting the Weismann barrier, and thus evolution can be logically connected with ontogenesis.