Epigenetic inheritance systems in bdelloid rotifers. I. Maternal‐age‐related biochemical effects

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Abstract
The present study focuses on the changes of protein patterns that occur with age and on their maintenance across orthoclonal generations (i.e., lines that belong to the same clone and that differ with the age of their ancestors). About 500 individuals of the bdelloid rotifer Macrotrachela quadricornifera were cultivated and processed, and their protein phenotypes compared by a similarity test. The number of protein bands decreased with the age of the individuals. Young rotifers had the young protein pheno‐type when born from young mothers, and the old protein pattern when born from aged ones. The age of their grandmother was irrelevant. On the basis of these results, bdelloid rotifers seemed to transmit to the offspring their biochemical phenotype modified by age and the modified phenotype could persist over the two generations considered. Thus, a truly evolutionarily ancient partheno‐genetic taxon, such as Bdelloidea, apparently produces variable offspring by transmitting phenotypic variations induced by non‐genetic factors.

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