• HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
Thursday, June 8, 2023
BIOENGINEER.ORG
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
No Result
View All Result
Bioengineer.org
No Result
View All Result
Home NEWS Science News Epigenomics

Mice can ‘warn’ sons, grandsons of dangers via sperm

Bioengineer by Bioengineer
December 1, 2013
in Epigenomics
Reading Time: 3 mins read
2
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare on RedditShare on Telegram

Lab mice trained to fear a particular smell can transfer the impulse to their unborn sons and grandsons through a mechanism in their sperm, a study said Sunday. The research claims to provide evidence for the concept of animals “inheriting” a memory of their ancestors’ traumas, and responding as if they had lived the events themselves.

Fear of a smell can be passed down several generations

It is the latest find in the study of epigenetics, in which environmental factors are said to cause genes to start behaving differently without any change to their underlying DNA encoding.

“Knowing how ancestral experiences influence descendant generations will allow us to understand more about the development of neuropsychiatric disorders that have a transgenerational basis,” said study co-author Brian Dias of the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia.

And it may one day lead to therapies that can soften the memory “inheritance”.

For the study, Dias and co-author Kerry Ressler trained mice, using foot shocks, to fear an odour that resembles cherry blossoms.

Later, they tested the extent to which the animals’ offspring startled when exposed to the same smell. The younger generation had not even been conceived when their fathers underwent the training, and had never smelt the odour before the experiment.

The offspring of trained mice were “able to detect and respond to far less amounts of odour… suggesting they are more sensitive” to it, Ressler told AFP of the findings published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

They did not react the same way to other odours, and compared to the offspring of non-trained mice, their reaction to the cherry blossom whiff was about 200 percent stronger, he said.

The scientists then looked at a gene, M71, that governs the functioning of an odour receptor in the nose that responds specifically to the cherry blossom smell.

The gene, inherited through the sperm of trained mice, had undergone no change to its DNA encoding, the team found.

But the gene did carry epigenetic marks that could alter its behaviour and cause it to be “expressed more” in descendants, said Dias.

This in turn caused a physical change in the brains of the trained mice, their sons and grandsons, who all had a larger glomerulus — a section in the olfactory (smell) unit of the brain.

“This happens because there are more M71 neurons in the nose sending more axons” into the brain, said Dias.

Similar changes in the brain were seen even in offspring conceived with artificial insemination from the sperm of cherry blossom-fearing fathers.

The sons of trained mouse fathers also had the altered gene expression in their sperm.

“Such information transfer would be an efficient way for parents to ‘inform’ their offspring about the importance of specific environmental features that they are likely to encounter in their future environments,” said Ressler.

Commenting on the findings, British geneticist Marcus Pembrey said they could be useful in the study of phobias, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorders.

“It is high time public health researchers took human transgenerational responses seriously,” he said in a statement issued by the Science Media Centre.

“I suspect we will not understand the rise in neuropsychiatric disorders or obesity, diabetes and metabolic disruptions generally without taking a multigenerational approach.”

Wolf Reik, epigenetics head at the Babraham Institute in England, said such results were “encouraging” as they suggested that transgenerational inheritance does exist, but cannot yet be extrapolated to humans.

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by AP, Mariette Le Roux.

Share12Tweet8Share2ShareShareShare2

Related Posts

blank

Discovered the sixth DNA base?

May 4, 2015
blank

The role DNA methylation plays in aging cells

November 18, 2014

Dopamine Turns Worker Ants into Warrior Queens

May 13, 2014

Epigenetics enigma resolved

December 26, 2013
Please login to join discussion

POPULAR NEWS

  • plants

    Plants remove cancer causing toxins from air

    41 shares
    Share 16 Tweet 10
  • Element creation in the lab deepens understanding of surface explosions on neutron stars

    36 shares
    Share 14 Tweet 9
  • Deep sea surveys detect over five thousand new species in future mining hotspot

    35 shares
    Share 14 Tweet 9
  • How life and geology worked together to forge Earth’s nutrient rich crust

    35 shares
    Share 14 Tweet 9

About

We bring you the latest biotechnology news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Follow us

Recent News

Bath Professor given international award recognizing lifetime research achievements

Scientists develop inorganic resins for generating and purifying radium and actinium

DNAmFitAge: Biological age indicator incorporating physical fitness

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 51 other subscribers
  • Contact Us

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
    • Home Page 2
  • News
  • National
  • Business
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Science

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In