Gemmule (pangenesis)

Gemmule (pangenesis)

Gemmules were imagined particles of inheritance proposed by Charles Darwin as part of his Pangenesis theory. This appeared in his book The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, published in 1868, nine years after the publication of his famous book On the Origin of Species.

Gemmules, also called plastitudes or pangenes, were assumed to be shed by the organs of the body and carried in the bloodstream to the reproductive organs where they accumulated in the germ cells or gametes. They thus provided a possible mechanism for the inheritance of acquired characteristics, as proposed by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, which Darwin believed to be a cause of the observed variation in living organisms.

This was prior to Gregor Mendel's discovery of the particulate nature of inheritance becoming common knowledge among biologists after their rediscovery in 1900.