Israeli-Led Scientists Win $1.2M Grant to Revisit Century-Old Heredity Experiments

Jerusalem, 5 August, 2025 (TPS-IL) — An international team led by Prof. Oded Rechavi of Tel Aviv University has received a $1.2 million grant from the Human Frontier Science Program to revisit early 20th-century experiments on the inheritance of acquired traits. The project will recreate studies originally conducted at Vienna’s Biologische Versuchsanstalt, a groundbreaking institute founded in 1902 by Jewish biologists.

“We propose a unique study, combining history and cutting-edge biology,” said Rechavi. Using modern tools, the researchers aim to test whether environmental factors can affect inheritance — a controversial idea once dismissed but now reconsidered in light of recent epigenetic discoveries. Only 4% of HFSP proposals are funded annually.