 Several topics that are receiving significant attention in the biology research community are directly related to the discussion of inheritance systems. One is the invigorated field of cultural evolution and social learning (see Whiten 2017). A second area is the discussion of inheritance of regulatory RNA molecules, an epigenetic inheritance process that goes beyond the transmission of RNA and involves developmental re-production (see Veigl 2017). A third area, already receiving significant attention from philosophers, is the hereditary properties and function of the microbiome. This is tied to the recent interest in holobionts, a term that refers to assemblages of multiple species, notably multi-cellular organisms and bacteria, that form ecological and potentially evolutionary units. It has been argued by some researchers that holobionts are units of selection and that the combined genome of the host and symbionts, dubbed ‘the hologenome’, is conceptually analogous to the genome, with the bacteria being analogous to genes. Arguably, this inheritance system has Lamarckian dimensions. Other researchers argue that the degree of vertical transmission of symbionts is typically too low to qualify the holobionts as units of selection. For discussion of these issues see Hurst (2017), Opstal &amp; Bordenstein (2015), and section IV of Gissis, Lamm &amp; Shavit (2018). Finally, increasing knowledge of the genetic system itself, in particular the role of chromatin shape and dynamics in gene expression as well as in mutation, recombination, and other fundamental processes, may lead to new perspectives on the relation between the genetic system and epigenetic mechanisms, and improve our understanding of the transmission of chromatin state. Arguably, the DNA and non-DNA components of the genome should be seen and studied as a dynamic and responsive developmental system (Lamm 2011, 2014). Moreover, better understanding of how genetic adaptation is reached under experimental conditions suggests how physiological and epigenetic responses may facilitate adaptation via other means, making a fitness improving response increasingly more robust, up to potentially becoming established via appropriate mutations (Yona et al. 2015). These results may lead to rethinking the dichotomy between plasticity and evolvability (Lamm &amp; Jablonka 2008) and support the idea of “natural genetic engineering” systems (see Shapiro 2011). 