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Your DNA may carry a ‘memory’ of your living conditions in childhood
- ihartley 15y agoI'm currently involved in research regarding DNA methylation in mice. Epigenetic modification is really interesting and still not very well understood insofar as how the response occurs. These methylation changes may also occur as a response to other environmental stresses later in life as well as childhood, and other epigenetic modifications may be passed to offspring. We should see some very interesting discoveries that change our current ideas of heritability and response to environmental stimuli in the next few years as we're able to better detect the epigenetic factors in a cost effective manner.
- Peroni 15y agoThe recent advancements in DNA research absolutely fascinate me. What really intrigues me is how easy/difficult it is for our environment and current mentality affect our DNA.
- gldalmaso 15y agoI have always thought that the random-mutation factor in Darwin's evolutionary theory was a rather poor explanation to the highly specialized organisms we see today. In that specific account I've, personally, always favored Lamarquism as the simplest, most plausible theory. Of course such an opinion might be considered 'heretic' among the scientific society, which I found to be way too dogmatic on most aspects.
- Peroni 15y agoThe guys at MIT may just be on your side: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarckism#Current_views http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarckism#Current_views
- abhikshah 15y agoBut random-mutation is just ONE part of Darwin's theory. The other critical part is natural selection and that is what allows for organisms that are specialized for their specific environments. Epigenetics is certainly important but it does not mean that evolutionary theory is incorrect.
- drzaiusapelord 15y ago>Of course such an opinion might be considered 'heretic' >which I found to be way too dogmatic on most aspects. Go ahead and design some falsifiable and testable experiments to prove this. You can whine about dogmatism or you can challenge it. I suspect like more Lamarckian ideas its quickly refuted, but you are welcome to try. That's how science works. As far as I, any many others, can tell, random mutation and natural selection works really, really well, but would love to be proved wrong. Please note "proven" isn't flowerly speech about how some ideas "feel" righter than others. Sorry, I didn't mean to sound like a dismissive asshole, but epigenetics is still a young science. We can't even tell if this stuff in inheritable or if it even makes any difference if it was. Epigenetic inheritance even if real doesn't change genes it just changes expression. Its really not like Lamarck at all (if you are fat and like rap music, you will have fat children who like rap music because magic, that's why!).
- gldalmaso 15y agoI don't think science should work on dogmatism at all... leave dogma to the church. I have seen more than a share of people that call themselves scientists literally laugh at an argument and dismiss it without analysis or a counter-argument. In fact, from a quick glance in history we see science prove itself wrong over and over again, which is natural, but it's very common to contemporary scientists think they are just right. All I'm saying is that sometimes, not all times, scientists appear more like cult-followers than researchers.
- drzaiusapelord 15y ago>In fact, from a quick glance in history we see science prove itself wrong over and over again, That's a feature, not a bug. Think something is wrong? Prove it. Then it becomes the status quo. Then that gets either refined or dismissed by a better theory. You may say this process is evolutionary...(oh, I love puns). Are there egos and politics involved? Yes, just like in any human endeavor.
- athesyn 15y agoWhat I find fascinating is whether or not the genes altered by our environment would send those altered genes through the reproductive system. It would seem like the answer no; otherwise each successive generation would just get weaker and weaker as a simple function of genetic damage carrying over decades, centuries, across multiple generations.
- jwallaceparker 15y agoI'd be curious to get a DNA reading to see if it matched my real world conditions.
- abhikshah 15y agoEpigenetics is a really exciting area of Biology right now as studies begin to investigate the causes and consequences of DNA methylation. It seems that, after all these years, Lamarck may be due for some credit! It should be noted, however, that this is not the only memory mechanism available to the cell. Gene expression, microRNA expression and protein modification can all act as switches (and thus memory) that place the cell in some discrete state. They're fairly transient and non-inheritable though.
- maxklein 15y agoOne thing I have observed, particularly with Africans, is that if they grow up in Europe or if they grow up in Africa, there is a clear difference in the way they look when they are older, no matter their socio-economic status at that point.
- david927 15y agoHave you seen the same effects on Africans that grew up wealthy in Africa, versus those that grew up in poor living conditions in Europe?
- maxklein 15y agoIt can also be seen, but to a different extent. An african that grows up in a city in a wealthy household seems to end up with a different sort of facial structure and skin than those who grow up in rural areas...and it never goes. However, the effect is far more pronounced among those who grow up abroad. You can see this clearly in london - it's pretty easy to observe which Africans migrated to England at perhaps age 10, vs those who were born and grew up in England.
- wisty 15y agoIt could just be the signs of malnutrition. 200 years ago there was about 1 foot difference between English nobles and Welch coal miners, because the nobles were better fed as children. It would probably show in a different facial structure too.
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- nodata 15y ago> it's pretty easy to observe What do I have to look for? How have you validated your observations? Got any examples?
- maxklein 15y ago
- willpearse 15y agoI too work in biology, and while this is interesting, that there are differences between people is not that surprising, and attempting to link socio-economic conditions to such widely different methylation patterns when you've got a sample size of 40 isn't very convincing. That said, nice work!
- th0ma5 15y agoDNA is expressed in RNA synthesizing proteins that in turn feedback to RNA, which feeds back to DNA, right? And this happens over multiple generations, and sometimes in a single person, depending on what aspects of which combination of the system we're talking about?
- david927 15y agoYou can't pass on these DNA methylation changes, right? But does this bring Lamarckism back into the realm of conceivable?
- jforman 15y agoRecent studies show there may actually be some limited transmission of epigenetic information: http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/epigenetics/inheritance/ http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/epigenetics/inheritan... Our understanding is still very limited, though. And yes, it is kind of ironic that Lamarck is getting a jab in after all this time :)
- paganel 15y ago> Our understanding is still very limited, though. And yes, it is kind of ironic that Lamarck is getting a jab in after all this time :) Who knows, maybe next thing we'll find is that the concept of "race" is not only a "social construct"?
- gldalmaso 15y agoI always thought that the scientific community accepted Darwin's random-mutation factor way too easily and without challenge. It never seemed very credible to me. The more I watched wild life documentaries the more Larmackism grew on me.
- Mvandenbergh 15y agoActually Darwin didn't know anything about random mutations, as in fact he didn't know about DNA or even genes. The Origin of Species is about observed results: "descent with modification" rather than about mechanism. In any case, I'm not too sure about the scientific community being so easily accepting of Darwin. It's true that evolution (that is, the gradual changes in the characteristics of populations) was nearly universally accepted relatively quickly, but natural selection as a mechanism was not. In fact, for some decades in the late 19th and early 20th centuries natural selection was widely regarded as a minor contributor to evolution. This was not a matter of anyone believing that natural selection didn't occur, but simply an argument over the relative magnitudes of different forces. Alternative drivers of evolution included neo-Lamarckism. Notably, estimates of the age of the Earth at the time were very much lower than our current ones and many scientists believed (correctly) that natural selection was too slow a process to have produced the variety of life observed over a 10-100 million year timespan.
- 6ren 15y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_methylation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_methylation seems to be a kind of cell parameterization, amongst other things.
- chrisbennet 15y agoThere was a facinating Nova show on epigenetics back in 2007 called "The Ghost in Your Genes" about the discovery that epigenetics could have intergenerational effects. I couldn't find a link to the video just to a transcript: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3413_genes.html http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3413_genes.html
- gmkoliver 15y agoI saw this for a class recently, here's the link (part 1 of 5): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toRIkRa1fYU&list=WL7AE0E3F91F538F8C&index=1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toRIkRa1fYU&list=WL7AE0E3...
- tintin 15y agoCould this explain the dreams and desires of the formal owner after a transplant?
- tintin 15y agoMaybe someone could explain the downvotes? This is a serious question. There have been stories about for instance heart transplantations where the new owner experiences dreams and desires of the first owner although the persons never met. These stories were always marked as 'not possible' but now it seems a bit more 'plausible'.
- omarchowdhury 15y agoThis research is not stating that memory is stored in DNA. The headline uses the word 'memory' as in 'influence'. The living conditions of a particular in childhood influences their DNA post-childhood.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- brudgers 15y agoThis != evidence for Lamarkian Genetics What would need to be shown in order to support Lamarkianism is that the methylation patterns are passed on to offspring (and showing that the methylation patterns in childhood were different from those at birth, would probably be helpful as well). It is fallacious to extrapolate from patterns of reproduction at the cellular level of amino acids to reproduction patterns at the organism level of sperm and egg. It is akin to applying quantum mechanics to billiard balls. What the study does show is that there are long term effects of childhood living conditions which manifest themselves at the celluar level. Given that we are readily able to observe some effects of childhood living conditions at the macro level of the human organism (e.g. physiological manifestations of diet or altitude), finding their biochemical mode of expression should not be entirely unexpected.
- Produce 15y agoI would argue that it (sort of) is because most people tend to stay at the socioeconomic level they were raised in. In other words, the mechanism for carrying this forward is not in the DNA but the culture.
- ellyagg 15y agoWhile a mechanism hasn't been shown yet, crickets were made to fear wolf spiders transgenerationally: http://www.jstor.org/pss/10.1086/650443 http://www.jstor.org/pss/10.1086/650443] After studying the issue, I'd be willing to bet a friend a lot of money that natural selection alone will be proven insufficient to fully explain evolution.
- Alex3917 15y agoFor what it's worth, epigenetics and methylation is one of the reasons why cannabinoids have shown anti-cancer properties: http://www.drugs.com/clinical_trials/turned-off-cannabinoid-receptor-turns-colorectal-tumor-growth-5233.html http://www.drugs.com/clinical_trials/turned-off-cannabinoid-... Essentially in some cancers the cells lose their ability to uptake cannabinoids because those receptors get methylated, and so by unmethylating them (and adding extra cannabinoids) you can attack the cancer.
- leeHS 15y agoBased on how meiosis works, I can see how methylation could be passed down to offspring. But these changes in methylation would have to occur within the specialized cells which produce sperm and egg. If the methylation pattern changes in your liver or heart cells, it doesn't matter since these somatic cells don't get to pass this information on to offspring. Females are born with all their eggs, so any changes in methylation that occur to these eggs will persist into adulthood (I assume). But is it possible that these eggs are somehow protected from this alteration? As for sperm, these are produced within the testes following puberty, and are generated continuously. Therefore, in order to pass down altered methylation, the original gamete cells responsible for generating sperm would have to be altered. But if you wanted to do this successfully, you'd have to make sure to alter ALL the gamete cells. Otherwise you're gambling as to which sperm cell hits the pay load. Again, I'm curious if these cells are more or less prone to altered methylation. I find this whole concept fascinating! Imagine...your dad gets bullied as a kid, results in altered methylation pattern, and this gets passed to you! Wow.
- leeHS 15y agoWhat I also find fascinating is the number of individuals with this sort of background reading/commenting on HN. I think it's great! Are many of you into Bioinformatics?
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