Cortical inheritance
Cortical Inheritance or structural inheritance was discovered by Tracy Sonneborn during his study on protozoa in the late 1930's. The mainstream scientific community believes that all inheritance is passed on via the genes in the nucleus of a cell. Sonneborn, however, demonstrated during his research on Paramecium that the structure of the cortex was not dependent on genes, or the liquid cytoplasm, but in the cortical structure of the surface of the ciliates. Preexisting cell surface structures provided a template that was passed on for many generations.
John R. Preer, Jr. following up on Sonneborn's work says the following: "The arrangement of
surface structures is inherited, but how is not known, Macronuclei pass on many of their characteristics to
new macronuclei, by an unknown and mysterious mechanism."
References
External links
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1456306/ http://www.genetics.org/cgi/reprint/145/2/217