The organism-environment interface

The Interface of the Organism and Its Environment

In the context of my 2024 lectures on "Epigenetics at the interface of organisms with their environments", the colloquium will further explore aspects of this interface, in particular the molecular and cellular processes underlying the interactions of an organism and its environment that result in phenotypic change. These include examples of short and long term responses by organisms to environmental changes, such as light, temperature, nutrition, toxins-and covering concepts such as genetic assimilation and phenotypic plasticity, as well as stress responses, survival and adaptation. The talks will consider many different organisms, ranging from the plant to the animal kingdoms, with examples of environmentally programmed, or environmentally induced phenomena studied at the molecular level. The intimate relationship between transposable elements and genetic and epigenetic regulation in plants will be discussed, as will the use of genetic and epigenetic data for identifying unknown environmental causes of human disease. There will also be presentations on epigenetic (non-DNA sequence based) inheritance and its potential role in transmitting environmentally induced cross-generational phenotypes in certain organisms. The extent to which epigenetic mechanisms may participate in bet-hedging strategies or even pave the way for permanent DNA-sequence based adaptations will be explored, revisiting the concept of the inheritance of acquired characters.