3 ms·

As somebody who’s working on a highly related topic, I’m thrilled to see the research explained so well here. But unfortunately I am unable to assess the qualit

by klmr 9y ago

As somebody who’s working on a highly related topic, I’m thrilled to see the research explained so well here. But unfortunately I am unable to assess the quality of the findings because the researchers have decided to buck convention and went to the press before publishing their scientific manuscript. And this immediately sets off alarm bells: Unfortunately experience shows that when researchers skip the “due process” of peer evaluation and go directly to the press they usually oversell their findings. I hope this isn’t the case here, and the findings hold up under scrutiny. My own experience is that working with sperm RNA is a b*tch because of high stochastic noise. It’s basically impossible to get any clear signal from a whole-transcriptome assay. I’m therefore quite interested in their quantification.

neom 9y ago
In the hypothetical, and the research is good: if I'm stressed out when I'm in the act of procreation I'll have less stressed out kids??
- klmr 9y ago
  Maybe. It’s really too early to say. Even assuming the mechanism described here is correct, there’s a difference between mice and humans, and there’s a difference between merely being stressed and a systemic stress response that would affect the sperm production (which, by the way, doesn’t occur just during sex but before). And, finally, the effect on the offspring is completely unclear. One of the effects, which was reported here, is that offspring is less stressed (why? how? we don’t know; that’s a major missing puzzle piece). But systemic stress has quite a few, and partially drastic, effects — increasing expression of a particular microRNA is just one of many consequences. It also generally negatively affects semen quality (e.g. [1]), which doesn’t fare well for procreation. And even just that particular microRNA in question, MiR-206, is tentatively implicated in multiple disease predispositions. You might make your children slightly less stressed. Or you might make it slightly more (or less) likely for them to acquire muscular dystrophy or schizophrenia. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4382866/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4382866/
  - mygo 9y ago
    >and there’s a difference between merely being stressed and a systemic stress response that would affect the sperm production (which, by the way, doesn’t occur just during sex but before). According to the way the research was described, this mechanism acts outside of the genetic code, so it isn’t a matter of when sperm is produced. These particles can latch on to the gamete long after the gamete is produced. For example they can be present along the lining or interstitial fluids in the epididymis, where sperm passes through from the testes during reproduction.

by klmr 9y ago

neom 9y ago

In the hypothetical, and the research is good: if I'm stressed out when I'm in the act of procreation I'll have less stressed out kids??

klmr 9y ago
Maybe. It’s really too early to say. Even assuming the mechanism described here is correct, there’s a difference between mice and humans, and there’s a difference between merely being stressed and a systemic stress response that would affect the sperm production (which, by the way, doesn’t occur just during sex but before). And, finally, the effect on the offspring is completely unclear. One of the effects, which was reported here, is that offspring is less stressed (why? how? we don’t know; that’s a major missing puzzle piece). But systemic stress has quite a few, and partially drastic, effects — increasing expression of a particular microRNA is just one of many consequences. It also generally negatively affects semen quality (e.g. [1]), which doesn’t fare well for procreation. And even just that particular microRNA in question, MiR-206, is tentatively implicated in multiple disease predispositions. You might make your children slightly less stressed. Or you might make it slightly more (or less) likely for them to acquire muscular dystrophy or schizophrenia. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4382866/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4382866/
- mygo 9y ago
  >and there’s a difference between merely being stressed and a systemic stress response that would affect the sperm production (which, by the way, doesn’t occur just during sex but before). According to the way the research was described, this mechanism acts outside of the genetic code, so it isn’t a matter of when sperm is produced. These particles can latch on to the gamete long after the gamete is produced. For example they can be present along the lining or interstitial fluids in the epididymis, where sperm passes through from the testes during reproduction.