Transgenerational inheritance of epigenetic variation

The term epigenetics applies to heritable variance without, any variation in DNA sequence. This may refer to variation transmitted only through mitosis involving a cell lineage or to the variation transmitted through meiosis from one generation of an organism to another. In this article we discuss a number of examples of transgenerational inheritance at the organism level. These include paramutations both in plants (including the classical work in maize) and animals (including mammals); imprinting; natural. variation in flower symmetry in Linaria; PAI gene family (involved in tryptophan biosythesis pathway) and stress-induced epigenetic changes in Arabidopsis; agouti viable yellow (A(vy)), axin fused (Axin(Fu)) and Kit locus in mouse and callipygh (CLPG) in sheep. In each case, the possible mechanism of the induction and inheritance of epigenetic variation has been described in some detail.