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Fathers’ choices may be packaged and passed down in sperm RNA
- marsven_422 10mo ago[dead]
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- anonwebguy 10mo ago[flagged]
- turtleyacht 10mo agoCurious if in vitro fertilization (IVF) could consider RNA impact when evaluating fitness. Current criteria appear to be motility, morphology, and DNA attributes (fragmentation & integrity) [1], all mostly visual or physical assessments. [1] https://vidafertility.com/en/best-sperm-selection/ https://vidafertility.com/en/best-sperm-selection/
- zerofor_conduct 10mo agoLamarck has entered the chat
- echelon 10mo agoI see you being downvoted, but it's a good quip. Lamarckian vs. Mendelian genetics was about heritable traits being acquired in life (Lamarck), or being discrete units passed down at conception (Mendel). Genetics is almost entirely Mendelian, but some of epigenetics is durable and thus Lamarckian. There's also retroviral integrations, transposons, and all sorts of other complexities that don't fit neatly into boxes.
- CuriouslyC 10mo agoNot just epigenetics, cells (and probably organisms) have mechanisms to induce mutations at elevated rates (e.g. E. Coli lacZ mutation under pressure). I wouldn't be surprised if nervous systems are elegantly wired to both epigentic and mutagenic levers to accelerate evolution through stimulus guided modifications rather than just raw survival/selection.
- an-allen 10mo agoInteresting about the epigenetics, transposons, and other DNA augmentations… These are all fundamentally a story of how the individual encounters and uses information in their lived experience. But there is also a very strong consensus narrative that must be respected, but also challenged and evolved. DNA is literally the informational substrate of a life… when you adopt a personal belief, or are subject to someone elses, you have the ability to help but also harm your informational substrate. Tend your garden of ideas with love and care.
- ls612 10mo agoThe dirty little secret is that there is an incredible ideological incentive for many for Lamarckianism to be true so that they can blame “lived experience” for every ill in the world. Retroviruses, transposons, etc do not have that specific property and thus you see far fewer articles extolling their purported impacts.
- DiscourseFan 10mo agoI think its interesting that in the "rationalist" latter half of the 20th century Freud began to be dismissed at least in part on account of his elective affinity with Lamarck; now, it is clear that certain environmental and social factors have an influence on offspring at the genomic level from both parents.
- zerofor_conduct 10mo agoFreud was not a scientist, he was a great artist. It is not clear whether any of his patients got better after Freud's treatment.
- yieldcrv 10mo ago> “It’s still very hand-wavy,” said the epigeneticist Colin Conine (opens a new tab) of the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia okay, I trust this article and source more where can I keep up with this in more mainstream but technical publications
- biophysboy 10mo agoI would recommend keeping tabs on authors rather than periodically checking specific publications.
- flexagoon 10mo ago> okay, I trust this article and source more Quanta Magazine is great! They have a cool YouTube channel as well
- Xevion 10mo ago[flagged]
- bethekidyouwant 10mo agoExercise and take nicotine. My kids have a leg up it seems.
- websiteapi 10mo agoassuming this is true, perhaps it's best to freeze sperm regularly with labels that way if you go off the deep end you can snapshot quite literally your best self? some possible times - right before college, right after college, after you meet someone you think you'd marry (but before you do), after marriage. seems like a neat premise for a sci fi novella.
- xeromal 10mo agoMakes me wonder if that's some of the influence that different siblings get? The first born gets more ambition, the middle child chills, and the baby acts like a boomer. jk. Honestly, sounds like a great read!
- PeterHolzwarth 10mo agoAdding "jk" after a casual prejudiced insult to a demographic doesn't undo the prejudiced insult.
- xeromal 10mo agoI'm insulting myself. I'm describing what is my family dynamic.
- jibal 10mo agoNo, you're insulting boomers, and you just doubled down.
- exe34 10mo agoIt was a self-deprecating joke which back-fired because nuance is lost on the internet. You got triggered, which is entirely human, but at this point, you're the one who is doubling down. Perhaps it's a good time to disconnect and enjoy some time with your family.
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- harshreality 10mo agoSomeone who works out every day will obviously have different metabolic and microRNA profiles; assuming that line of research holds up and those biomolecular profiles make it into the zygote, survive many replication cycles, and act as developmental signalling molecules affecting gene expression during embryonic and fetal development, there could be life-long effects. What can't happen is inter-generational transmission of particular subjective experiences that aren't paired with specific, unique metabolic, hormonal, and gene-expression signatures. Only biomolecular-mediated phenotypes, the most general and obvious of which would be things like stress or exercise or diet, make sense to be transmitted that way. For instance, someone who's chronically afraid might transmit some kind of stress/fear modulating signals to offspring. Someone who's afraid of a specific thing, however, cannot transmit fear of that specific thing unless there's some incredible and unexplored cognition-to-biomolecular signalling mechanism that's entirely unexplored and undescribed. Therefore, I don't know why the article uses the term "lived experience", which is too broad a term to describe what the research suggests might be occurring.
- yearolinuxdsktp 10mo agoWe know that severe stress (such as trauma) leaves chemical marks on the genes, potentially passed down to the offspring. For example, this paper writes about an “accumulating amount of evidence of an enduring effect of trauma exposure to be passed to offspring transgenerationally: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5977074/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5977074/ Though “lived experience” can encompass a lot of things, it definitely encompasses severe stress. For example, constantly worrying about money because you’re poor can definitely put you under severe stress. Also, growing up without secure attachment to your caretakers, being asked to do role reversal (having to take care of your parents as a child), things like that will generate complex PTSD.
- diab0lic 10mo agoThe comment you’re replying to suggests “lived experience” is too broad, not too narrow. The issue isn’t that it fails to include your example. It fails to exclude other things. Part of my lived experience today was seeing a manatee. It is unlikely this will be passed on.
- diego_moita 10mo agoThis reminds me of the transgenerational trauma on the descendants of the Dutch Hongerwinter of 1944-45. Generations after, people carry in their epigenics the effects of that tragedy:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics_of_anxiety_and_stress%E2%80%93related_disorders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics_of_anxiety_and_str...
- downboots 10mo agoAnxiously looking forward to AGI in the form of übermäuse
- Cyphase 10mo ago42
- jjmarr 10mo ago> For instance, mouse fathers exposed to nicotine(opens a new tab) sire male pups with livers that are good at disarming not just nicotine but cocaine and other toxins as well. queue rationalist fathers microdosing nicotine patches before conception to give their kids the best chance at abusing drugs.
- guerrilla 10mo ago> rationalist Not without a new cult spin-off you don't!
- sallveburrpi 10mo agoWhat does disarming mean here? I wound read it as “the drug has less effect” - so in that case you can better abuse these drugs if you are worse at “disarming” them I guess
- Liquix 10mo agoperhaps "making less harmful to the body"? this could potentially be accomplished separately from making them less effective
- walthamstow 10mo agoI would have thought the main armament that nicotine has is its addictiveness
- temp0826 10mo ago"Hard headed", "not a cheap date", "not a lightweight"? Hard to say if increased tolerance is good or bad (especially if we're uncertain about how addictiveness/susceptibility to addictive behavior it passed)
- bjrobz 10mo agook now is my chance. what is this (opens new tab) phenomenon?!
- stavros 10mo ago
- lachlan_gray 10mo agoEarlier this year moving home to Canada, instead of flying I bought a van in California and drove it back with all my stuff. I was taken aback to learn my dad did the exact same thing at my age!
- there_is_try 10mo agoAny particular reason for moving back to Canada ?
- fb03 10mo agoYes, it was configured in his mRNA
- agentifysh 10mo agooh shit....
- shevy-java 10mo ago"researchers, including those spearheading the work, are cautious about overselling their results" Either it is correct; or it is not. Perhaps it is somewhat correct, but then it may not be fully correct, so it would contain wrong information. I write this here because science does not really work well when it is based on speculation. So this article is weird. It starts by speculating about something rather than analyse the article. It then continues to "textbooks have to be rewritten". Well, I think if you are in science, you need to demonstrate that all your claims made need to be correct - and others can verify it, without any restriction whatsoever. > “We just don’t have really any understanding of how RNAs can do this, and that’s the hand-wavy part,” Conine said. So their theory is incomplete as of yet. That's not good. There are examples of where theories were lateron shown to be wrong. See this article: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1197258 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1197258 It was later redacted - a total fabrication. A lie.
- jaredklewis 10mo ago> Either it is correct; or it is not. Perhaps it is somewhat correct, but then it may not be fully correct, so it would contain wrong information. I don't understand your criticism. It makes complete sense that the researchers are worried about the research being oversold. It's routine for media to take a scientific finding and grossly exaggerate its impact, i.e. "New research proves you can exercise your way to a fit child" or whatever. This is science, we don't know if anything is "correct." The more compelling the research, the more we can adjust our priors as to what is "correct." > There are examples of where theories were lateron shown to be wrong. There are also lots of examples where theories were later not shown to be wrong. What's your point? Do you have an actual, concrete criticism of the methodology of the epigentic research in TFA, or are your just bloviating?
- eximius 10mo agoDetecting an effect is present is separate from effect power and mechanism. Showing an effect is present is usually the first step before the other two.
- MyOutfitIsVague 10mo agoThere is plenty of room in science for research that is just to examine and collect data. I don't understand your argument that science should only be to demonstrate claims and "completing" theories. Is science not about experimenting to slowly form a more complete understanding about how our world works? Research that does little more than collect novel data and show probable correlations is still extremely valuable.
- indigodaddy 10mo agoHow about my grandfather's effect, and up the chain?
- Animats 10mo agoIs this a revival of Lysenkoism?[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
- jmcgough 10mo agoEvery time we think Lamarckism is finally dead, we get stuff like the article.
- technick 10mo agoI guess this makes sense if you also consider the history of dog breeding. The best traits are always breed forward into future generations, those characteristics could be how athletic the dog is or how friendly the dog is.
- jibal 10mo agoYou're talking about traits passed via DNA, which is nothing new ... this is quite different.
- wakawaka28 10mo agoFrom the perspective of an individual breeder, they cannot know how much of a trait is from DNA or not. It may be more likely to be DNA-driven if you can prove that the trait is durable over many generations, in different environments. At least, that is my guess.
- jibal 10mo agoThis completely misses the point.
- jibal 10mo ago> “This study shows that paternal exercise can confer benefits — enhanced endurance and metabolic health — to offspring,” So good habits can be good for offspring. > For instance, mouse fathers exposed to nicotine(opens a new tab) sire male pups with livers that are good at disarming not just nicotine but cocaine and other toxins as well. So bad habits can be good for offspring. > “We just don’t have really any understanding of how RNAs can do this, and that’s the hand-wavy part,” It seems to me to all be the handwavy part. I'm happy to wait until the research is considerably further advanced, past the clickbait stage.
- yes_man 10mo agoTheres huge uncertainty and layered assumptions in all of microbiology and biochemistry about how exactly things work on small scale. Because it is really hard to study live reactions in little things you can just barely see on an electron microscope. But yet humanity has managed to assert statistical truths about for example genetics and explain countless diseases, even cure and alleviate some. So even if you don’t have a theory on how exactly something works from the ground up, if you have statistical evidence, plenty of useful and practical advances can be built top-bottom and we have outcomes that validate this. Not giving any opinion on this piece specifically but just saying there can be scientific value even if the details are hand-wavy.
- roywiggins 10mo agoFor an example, scientists discovered both viruses and genetics long before they knew the molecular basis of either of them.
- jibal 10mo agoI'm well aware of that. The point is that people are drawing all sorts of unwarranted conclusions from this lay report on early stage research.
- lutusp 10mo ago> The point is that people are drawing all sorts of unwarranted conclusions from this lay report on early stage research. That is partly because no one seems willing to summarize this work, in concise form, for nonspecialists. Such a summary might be, "This is an important finding, but it doesn't mean Lysenko was right, and the term 'inheritance' doesn't have just one meaning." I think the term "inheritance" for both DNA and epigenetic information transfers (as in the linked article) is innately confusing.
- bradley13 10mo agoEpigenetics is fascinating. For example, the well-docunented effects of war on the following generations. For example, longevity.
- tsoukase 10mo agoI can imagine how difficult it would be to differentiate between nature and nurture in such human observations. An exercising vs smoking parent affects the child because of his RNA or his behaviour? Identical twins studies have their limitations in number of participants.
- KellyCriterion 10mo agoI have two children: Prior to them, I didnt think that behaviour or traits are inheritable. When one of them was aronud 3 or 3.5, I observed an interesting behaviour: It was about the meal, which contained fries - and ketchup. He saw that the ketchup was flowing slowly towards the fries and reached there finally - he became funnily hectict, trying to prevent even more ketchup touching the fries. Today I think he behaved that way ... because ... on my plate which fries & ketchup ... if this happens ... then ... you know :-D :-D :-D :-D It drives me nuts, really - if I am at a restaurant, I ask always for separte plates for things which are fried, because I love the crust and it gets destroyed if any type of gravy is scattered around the plate :-D Or maybe my son just found out the same, and then there is no inheritance. Im fine with this as well. :-D But what I can clearly see, is: In their body shape I can see that their mother and I were super-fit-in-shape when they were "created".
- spiderfarmer 10mo agoNurture.
- KellyCriterion 10mo agoNote sure if I understand what you mean? You mean that we showed them already by that age to not mix fries & ketchup? :-D If children are that small and you are sitting with two of them at the table, handing over those ideas to them in a "nurturing way" is the last thing on what you can focus on with two small kids at the table :-)) And its always great if someone gives a downvote here if you share some personal life stories :-D
- decimalenough 10mo agoFascinating! So in addition to the source code (DNA), when you spawn a new child process nature passes along a config file (RNA) as well.
- hleszek 10mo agoInheriting environment variables
- childintime 10mo agoAnother example of "evolution" being deprecated in favor of "backpropagation" and the result is an evolution towards a holistic intelligence, to which everything contributes? IOW, a Large Life Model?
- diego_moita 10mo agoNo, the article is about science, not religion.
- thrance 10mo agoLysenkoism[1] reborn? Hopefully not. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
- chiefalchemist 10mo agoIs this not the basis of epigenetics? Don’t we already have human-based examples? While I don’t recall the details there was an example of how starvation (of eventual parents) during WW II impacted the children. There is also, a similar example of how the effects of diet was passed along during The Great Depression.
- blitz_skull 10mo agoI always find it fascinating when science catches up to the Bible. The Bible clearly articulates some form of generational “pass-through” for the sins of the father passing to the children. While I do think it largely refers to a spiritual judgement, it’s hard to ignore the real-world examples of abuse that always seem to repeat themselves without a huge effort on the part of, someone, usually the child after they’ve grown up, to break the cycle. Source: I’ve seen a lot of brokenness in our country’s foster system.
- timbit42 10mo agoWhere does the Bible say that the sins of the father are passed to the children? Ezekiel 18 says exactly the opposite. Romans 5 doesn't say we inherit Adam's sin but that we inherit the consequences of Adam's sin. Exodus 20:5 says the iniquity of the fathers pass down for three or four generations. This is not referring to the sin itself, but to the effects of the sin of the children who grow up watching their parents sin and learn to do the same. Psalm 51:5 says children are brought forth in iniquity and in sin they are conceived, but this doesn't refer to the child's sin but to the parent's sin. The concept of original sin didn't come into being until early in the fifth century but there really isn't scriptural support for it.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- EGreg 10mo ago[flagged]
- ashurbanipal 10mo agoThere is no notable evidence here, just theoretical hints. Sympathetic magic, translated into modern context.
- Ari_Ugwu 10mo agoIt makes a kind of intuitive sense to me. Given I have no real understanding of the topic. Perfect click bait to get me to feel smart waxing intellectual on the toilet. It’s interesting to think this information being passed is something like “Heads up. This dude does a lot of exercise which means it must be crucial to survival wherever we are.”
- 6510 10mo agoBut only recent data related to successful reproduction.
- dgan 10mo agoSooo how many leetcodes i d have to do before my future child aytomatically knows it all at birth?
- poemxo 10mo agoMaybe we should stop viewing DNA as source code or I guess more importantly as the sole source of heritability. It's clear that parts of DNA are somehow variably expressed. Different sections of DNA are "unrolled" depending on how you live your life, and unrolled DNA is part of an entire complex. Now it seems parts of that complex are heritable. Just a guess. I'm not a biologist.
- TacticalCoder 10mo agoClassic patriarchy!
- kittikitti 10mo agoAcknowledging this sort of theory was considered pseudoscience for many years, in the realm of epigenetics. I'm glad the gatekeepers are coming around to finally acknowledge this as real science. Now we just need a designated media personality to communicate it to the masses. After that, I can finally have a conversation about it without people casting me as a lunatic.