 While relevant mechanisms were first characterized in the 1960s and 70s, omics-approaches have furthered the study of cellular epigenetics, referring to molecular mechanisms including DNA methylation, changes in chromatin structure, and non-coding RNA related regulation (Buklijas 2018; Morange 2020: Ch. 26; Nicoglou &amp; Merlin 2017). These mechanisms can result in patterns of differential gene expression that remain stable across mitotic cell division, thus contributing to the explanation of development. Epigenetic modifications have also been shown to be conserved in meiosis, facilitating the inheritance of phenotypic variation across generations, independently of changes in DNA sequence, a fact with consequences for evolutionary biology (Jablonka &amp; Raz 2009).