Abstract
This final lecture served as a conclusion to the previous four lectures, prior to the opening of the symposium. One of the final questions addressed in this lecture was whether epigenetic processes could play a short-term rescue or catch-up role for species facing environmental stress, in the context of evolution. Environmental changes could increase heritable phenotypic variation in several ways. One could be to unmask cryptic genetic variation (e.g. through DNA demethylation or chromatin remodeling that can activate otherwise silent genes). Another pathway could be the generation of genetic variation (for example, if epigenetic factors are disrupted by environmental stressors, this can lead to the release of transposable elements, which in turn can lead to new DNA mutations and genomic variation.
