Lamarckian Inheritance
Historically misleading synonym for inheritance of acquired characteristics.

Land Bridge
A connection between two land masses, especially continents (e.g., the Bering land bridge linking Alaska and Siberia across the Bering Strait) that allows migration of plants and animals from one land mass to the other. Before the widespread acceptance of continental drift, the existence of former land bridges was often invoked to explain  faunal and floral similarities between continents now widely separated.

On a smaller scale, the term may be applied to land connections that have now been removed by recent tectonics or sea-level changes e.g.; between northern France and southeastern

Leader Sequence
The portion of an mRNA molecule 5’ to the initiation codon. This sequence is    not translated into protein, but probably contains regulatory sequences. Also known as the 5’ untranslated region (5’ UTR).

Leading Strand
In DNA replication, the strand that is synthesized in a continuous manner toward the replication fork.
2. The DNA strand synthesized with few or no interruptions; synthesized 5’ to 3’ toward the replication fork.

Leakey, Maeve
A paleoanthropologist at the National Museums of Kenya, Maeve is the discoverer of Kenyanthropus platyops and Australopithecus anamensis. She is married to Richard Leakey.