Bonaventure said: "WHat about excessive /prolonged use of hormones in meristemming, which may be the cause of overly vegetatively proliferating plantlets which produce numerous small growths and refuse to bloom even after years of optimal culture. Benlate anyone? Bonaventure" I suspect that at least some of those effects, but I don't really know of course, are not epigenetic. Colchicine induced tetraploids, for instance, are not epigentic but rather something that has changed for the DNA by changing the ploidy. From my understanding, epigenetic effects are transDNA and the really mind blowing bit is that they affect the switches that turn genes on and off, that they can be caused by environmental stress, aging, etc and that they can be passed on to future generations ALTHOUGH, and that is the significant part, they are not in the DNA code. It is sort of like finding a "fourth dimension" that applies to genetics. And that is what is so mind boggling and suggests a huge new body of research that is not even in its infancy but rather not much beyond embryo stage in terms of what I can gather is known. Jean in Nova Scotia
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