Comment by NotGMan
11 hours ago
Genetic would mean that genes get modified.
But there might be other ways that some traits get inherited, eg by changing the cellular environment in the sperm/egg itself which could affect the offspring while keeping the genes the same.
Maybe he's trying to go to the earliest idea of "gen-es" aka the reasons for the traits of an individual. The idea existed before the discovery of cells kernels and DNA right ? so in a way, if there are other mechanisms involved in passing traits to children, it could be termed as gen-something
Yes, that depends on the definition. Lamarck could fit into it, but he had no clue about DNA, genes and so forth; neither had Darwin. He babbled about gemmulae.
Even the definition of a gene is not very accurate. Many important sequences yield a miRNA or another RNA. Only few sequences yield a mRNA. Some "genes" are just integrated viruses/phages/transposons etc... that were modified. One of the most fascinating one was the retrovirus in regards to the mammalian placenta: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4332834/ but there are many more examples. We are all DNA hybrids at the end of the day. The whole species concepts makes very little sense these days, IMO. I can see the use case for eukaryotes, but it makes no sense to me for bacteria yet alone viruses.