Non-mendelian genetics/ non-darwinian evolution

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No I wouldn't consider transposable elements moving around within a genome to be a form of non mendelian inheritance. I would consider retroviral insertions of exogenous genetic material to be.

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I am not sure I get why they are qualitatively different. The end result is a proviral-like integration that was previously not present regardless of its origin. The only difference is that the origin of a within genome transposition would coalesce to a specific LINE, SINE, HERV etc. within the genome and the exogenous virus would be more similar to one of the retroviral classes. However, ultimately, HERVs for example are more similar to exogenous retroviruses than to other portions of the genome.In terms of revisions of the great synthesis, it is my impression that the Evo-Devo field is hoping to make such a breakthrough. That field of course, would have to take into consideration everything from mutations in DNA, imprinting, the histone code, etc.

Try Genomatix and the program MatInspector. I think as an academic institution you can access it for free, or at least do a limited use trial.

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P.S. Thanks to mammuthus for that genomatix link, the Matinspector program itself wasn't much use but the Bibliosphere program is very interesting, considerably superior to the other literature mining programs I have tried.

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I have not used Matinspector myself but a colleague of mine is scanning HERV LTRs for conserved transcription binding sites with great success. On the other hand, the regions he has to scan are a few kb and not 1.5 Mb. Bibliosphere is an interesting program though you have to play around with the filter or you end up with a lot of junk.

Imprinting is heritable. It is a non-DNA based heritable change. Whether a fast track to speciation or a potential species barrier is an interesting question. Slight changes in imprinting seem to account for the failure of clones to develop (and those that do have abnormalities) so it is also possible that differences in imprinting could prevent two closely related species from forming F1's even if their DNA sequences are very similar. I don't know how much this has been looked into. On the other hand, it is pseudo-mendelian. You inherit the imprint from your parents so would it contradict or merely supplement DNA vertical transmission?

Thanks pink sasquatch. I should have known that if there was a subject in imprinting research I did not know much about that Shirley Tilghman had already done the research and published it

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So, I would ask you if you think it is parental OR species inheritance since I think the jury is still out on parental imprinting.

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I would say parental. I think it is much more likely that two members of the same species share the exact same DNA sequences as opposed to the exact same imprinting pattern. I would expect that an F1 offspring would share the imprinting pattern of its parents but perhaps with more variability than seen at the genetic level i.e. methylation differences accrue more rapidly than DNA sequence differences. But it probably also works under a principle of conservation. Differential methlyation of a non-expressed, non-coding piece of junk DNA is probably tolerable for an organism. But screw up methylation or acetlyation of the Xist locus and it causes major problems.