Corals Upend Longstanding Idea About Genetic Inheritance in animals

Amazing stuff! More variety for sessile animals!

"... The finding points to a new source of genetic variation in coral that may hasten the rate at which these organisms evolve and adapt. ..."

From the abstract:

"Since 1892, it has been widely assumed that somatic mutations are evolutionarily irrelevant in animals because they cannot be inherited by offspring. However, some nonbilaterians segregate the soma and germline late in development or never, leaving the evolutionary fate of their somatic mutations unknown. By investigating uni- and biparental reproduction in the coral Acropora palmata (Cnidaria, Anthozoa), we found that uniparental, meiotic offspring harbored 50% of the 268 somatic mutations present in their parent. Thus, somatic mutations accumulated in adult coral animals, entered the germline, and were passed on to swimming larvae that grew into healthy juvenile corals. In this way, somatic mutations can increase allelic diversity and facilitate adaptation across habitats and generations in animals."

Corals Upend Longstanding Idea About Genetic Inheritance | The Scientist Magazine® Most animals can’t pass on mutations that arise spontaneously throughout their lives—but Elkhorn corals can.

Inheritance of somatic mutations by animal offspring (open access)

Fig. 1. Detection and mapping of somatic mutations across a parent coral colony and five nearest neighbor colonies (ramets) from the same coral genet