Meeting Abstract
S8.3-4 Monday, Jan. 6 15:00 Diversity of Phenotypic Plasticity CREWS, David; Univ of Texas, Austin crews@mail.utexas.edu
Developmental plasticity has the potential to generate novel phenotypes. These may be nuances or wholesale transformations, adaptive or maladaptive. The environment dictates such outcomes. The generation of phenotypes is usually in the dimension of epigenetics and not by traditional genetic bases for inheritance. Epigenetic effects are defined as changes in the phenotype and/or specific traits that result from the environmental modification of the molecular factors and processes around DNA that regulate genome activity yet are independent of the DNA sequence. Environment is defined as inclusive of all stimuli, both internal and external to the individual that may impinge on the organism during its life cycle. In studies on environmental epigenetics, the goal is to identify a phenotypic outcome – but which one(s)? The term ‘phenotype’ is not meant to convey a unitary physical feature but, in most instances, a consolidation of multiple traits. Traditionally a trait is defined as any measurable aspect of the individual. In general, a deeper understanding of a particular phenotype increases proportionally with the number of traits that are measured in the same individual. Selection of particular genetic, morphological, physiological, behavioral, and brain traits should be predicated on the pertinent literature and demonstrated to be important for the question at hand. In this perspective a gene has no greater meaning than body mass, circulating concentration of a hormone, etc. Indeed, because expression of individual genes only has meaning in the context of other genes within and outside their functional categories, and because higher order traits are compounded and transformed from lower levels (e.g., emergent properties of the combination of traits at lower levels of biological organization), the expression of any particular gene has relatively little importance due to epistasis and redundancy.
