It used to be through that an individuals exposure to enviro

It used to be through that an individual\'s exposure to environmental conditions during their lifetime (e. g stress, famine and chemical exposure) could only affect the individual and could not passed to successive generations. We now know this is not true. Explain.

Solution

Environmental exposure in earliest stages of life have potential to cause irreversible development changes.. Consequently, an individual can ‘acquire’ any number of phenotypes, often with long-term consequences for performance .If early post-natal conditions affect an individual (the F1 generation,),with effects that are subsequently seen in its offspring (the F2 generation), it indicates an inter-generational effect due to conditions experienced by the F1 parent . However, if these early life conditions are shaped by the preceding (F0) generation , then the variation in early life environment experienced by the F1 may be partially generated by variation in the environment experienced earlier in life by their F0 parents, pushing the root cause of the inter-generational effect back a generation.