Vol.:(0123456789) Acta Biotheoretica https://doi.org/10.1007/s10441-020-09396-7 1 3 REGULAR ARTICLE Inheritance as Evolved and Evolving Physiological Processes Francesca Merlin 1  · Livio Riboli‑Sasco 1,2 Received: 25 April 2019 / Accepted: 15 October 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020 Abstract In this paper, we adopt a physiological perspective in order to produce an intelligible overview of biological transmission in all its diversity. This allows us to put forward the analysis of transmission mechanisms, with the aim of complementing the usual focus on transmitted factors. We underline the importance of the structural, dynami- cal, and functional features of transmission mechanisms throughout organisms’ life cycles in order to answer to the question of what is passed on across generations, how and why. On this basis, we propose a vision of biological transmission as net- works of heterogeneous physiological mechanisms, not restricted to transmission mechanisms stricto sensu. They prove to be themselves suited candidates for evolu- tionary explanations. They are processes both necessary for evolution to happen and resulting themselves from evolution. This leads us to call for a strategy of endogeni- zation to account for transmission, and more specifically inheritance, as evolved and evolving physiological mechanisms. Keywords Inheritance · Non-genetic transmission · Transmission mechanisms · Physiological perspective · Evolutionary dynamics · Extended inheritance · Strategy of endogenization 1 Introduction For decades, the concept of heredity has been associated with the transmission of genetic material (in the sense of the linear sequence of DNA). On the basis of evi- dence for parent-offspring resemblance due to non-genetic forms of transmission, there is at present a relatively large consensus in the scientific community con- cerning the need to extend this concept. Since the 1990s, and in the context of this * Francesca Merlin francesca.merlin@univ-paris1.fr 1 IHPST-Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne & CNRS, 13 rue du Four, 75006 Paris, France 2 Atelier des Jours à Venir, 97 allée Théodore Monod, 64210 Bidart, France