In the eighteenth century the French naturalist Jean Baptiste de Lamarck believed that an animal's use or disuse of an organ affected that organ's development in the animal's offspring. ███
Intro to Topic ·Lamarckianism
Environmentally induced adaptations can somehow be inherited.
Mama giraffe stretched its neck out to reach tall leaves (that's the environmentally induced adaptation). Somehow baby giraffe is able to inherit a long neck.
Scientists newly discovered numerous examples. I'm expecting to read on to find examples of where a mama organism's environmentally induced adaptation gets passed onto her babies.
Environmentally induced adaptation in this case is the loss of cell walls in bacteria. This adaptation (loss of cell wall) does get passed onto subsequent generations of bacteria. The mechanism of inheritance is not via genes but rather via the interaction among genes.
Virus can infect fruit flies and add a gene which will get passed on. If infected flies are kept warm during reproduction, the virus is eliminated and so is the gene.
If an E. coli bacterium with a certain kind of gene comes into contact with another without that kind of gene, the gene can be inserted into latter, which will then get passed onto its offspring.
The causal mechanism found in E. coli could have helped to speed up evolution. For example, complex cells could have acquired photosynthesis by having come into contact with bacterium that possessed the photosynthesis gene.
Implications ·Gene inheritance can be "vertical" or "horizontal"
"Vertical" inheritance is what we are familiar with, inheritance of genes from from ancestors. "Horizontal" inheritance is what the previous paragraphs described: from viruses, plasmids, bacteria, or other environmental agents.
Conclusion ·Horizontal transmission may be the mechanism for inheritance that Lamarck needed
Passage Style
Phenomenon-hypothesis
Single position
16.
Which one of the following, ██ █████ ██████ ███ ████ ███████ ███ █████████ ███████████
Question Type
WSE
We’re trying to strengthen Lamarck’s hypothesis, which is that an animal’s use or disuse of an organ affects that organ’s development in the animal’s offspring. Let’s look for an example of what Lamarck describes – because an animal uses or doesn’t use an organ, its offspring will inherit a difference in that organ.
This doesn’t involve inheritance of an acquired trait. The antlers are not something that the parent deer acquired before they produced offspring. Rather, deer with antlers are more likely to produce offspring and so are more likely to pass on the genes for antlers. (A) describes the traditional theory of natural selection. (If you don’t already know what natural selection is and how it’s different from Lamarck’s theory, you should go ahead and just Google it. Yes, this is outside knowledge, which isn’t necessary to solve this question, but you should definitely just learn things as you’re studying for the LSAT. There are certain things that the professional world and law schools will expect you to understand, and the general concept of natural selection is one of them.)
b
Anteaters developed long ██████ ███████ ███ ████████ █████████ ███ █████ ██ █████ ██ █████ ████ ██████ ████ █████ ███████
This is an example of how an animal’s use of its organ affects that organ’s development in offspring. Because anteaters stretch their snouts, their offspring inherit long snouts.
c
Potatoes produced from █████████ █████ ████ ██ ██ ████ █████████ ██ ███████ ████ ███ ████████ ████████ ████ ███████ ██████
This doesn’t involve an animal’s use of an organ affecting the development of that organ in offspring. The potato is not using an organ more or less and isn’t passing on traits related to that organ.
This doesn’t involve an animals’ use of an organ affecting the development of that organ in offspring. We’re not told that the lions raised in captivity are using some body feature more or less or that lions raised in the wild are using some body feature more or less.
e
Pups born to ████ ████ ████ ██ ██ ████ ██████████ ████ ███ ████ ████ ██ ████ ████ ███ ████████
This doesn’t involve an animals’ use of an organ affecting the development of that organ in offspring. We’re not told that the pups born to wild dogs are using an organ more or less or that pups born to hunting dogs are using an organ more or less.
Difficulty
86% of people who answer get this correct
This is a slightly challenging question.
It is similar in difficulty to other questions in this passage.
CURVE
Score of students with a 50% chance of getting this right
25%125
140
75%156
Analysis
WSE
Phenomenon-hypothesis
Science
Single position
Answer Popularity
PopularityAvg. score
a
2%
157
b
86%
167
c
5%
160
d
4%
162
e
4%
166
Question history
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