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> “This study shows that paternal exercise can confer benefits — enhanced endurance and metabolic health — to offspring,” So good habits can be good for offspr

by 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 ago
Theres 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 ago
  For an example, scientists discovered both viruses and genetics long before they knew the molecular basis of either of them.
- jibal 10mo ago
  I'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.
AlecSchueler 10mo ago
If you ignore "good" and "bad" then it's just "traits can be passed through this mechanism" egg seems a lot more reasonable.
- AlecSchueler 10mo ago
  s/egg/which/
  - sejje 10mo ago
    You don't egg randomly inserted words?
    - cwmoore 10mo ago
      eh… can someone please accurately vibe code this for me? s/(s\\\/egg\\\/which)/s\/egg\/egg which\//
      - schemathings 10mo ago
        Now I want McDonalds McEggWhich
- jibal 10mo ago
  But that's not what it says. RNA fragments are entering the ovum and having some sort of effect .... that's quite different from passing traits the way genes on chromosomes do.
- matt-attack 10mo ago
  But shouldn’t there have been an evolutionary advantage for such a thing to develop?
  - lazide 10mo ago
    Not necessarily for the individual. Some trees have mechanisms, for instance, where they die quickly but signal other trees if exposed to certain issues, allowing the other trees to put up a better defense. Ants and other insects sometimes do the same thing. Essentially a ‘jumps on the grenade’ gene.
larusso 10mo ago
I agree. The example with Nicotine intake having a somewhat positive effect on the children feels too wild at the money. Think of all the kids of the 60th and 70th. They must be immune to most toxins ;). Yes I take this example to the extreme. I also feel that this could maybe contradict what we learned from evolution theory. Why would it take so long for a given treat to establish itself. Maybe I mix too much into one bag after reading this one article.
- lukan 10mo ago
  If true, I suppose there is also a opportunity cost involved. Meaning selecting for better coping with nicotine, does not help selecting for smarter offspring and maybe even preventing that. So it might be somewhat positive but at a cost unknown. Also there are the very known costs of nicotine damaging sperms, or of course being in literal smoke as a child (or adult) and deal with those real effects.
- sigmoid10 10mo ago
  >I also feel that this could maybe contradict what we learned from evolution theory. It doesn't, but the article doesn't go into this detail, so people unfamiliar with the field wouldn't understand why. The keyword is epigenetics. I.e. how certain genes become activated or deactivated through behaviour and/or environmental influences. But the DNA sequence itself remains unaltered. So no evolution necessary. There are basically a bunch of molecules than sit on top of your DNA that regulate gene expression. They don't just tell a cell to behave like a skin cell or a brain cell, they also regulate the entire cellular metabolism. The discovery that male sperm can also transmit this epigenetic information to offspring is relatively new, but now that we know that, it makes total sense that these gene-expression-modifying behaviours in fathers could affect their children. After all, they simply get to start with a good (or bad) bunch of epigenetic markers. They will not persist across many generations though, so it has no real long term effect on evolution. It may even be an evolved mechanism that allows organisms to respond to environmental changes on timeframes that would be prohibited by evolution.
  - pcl 10mo ago
    > ”They will not persist across many generations though” Why not? Is there some tempering mechanism on epigenetic transfer? I could imagine that some sperm-conferred epigenetic markers could continue down the male descendants unbroken.
DANmode 10mo ago
You took a left-turn: Nicotine is on-par with caffeine in isolation. It’s the rest of the crap in smokes and vapes to be concerned with. I was surprised to learn nicotine is used by functional doctors to treat CFS-adjacent conditions, and the mechanisms therein.
- whimsicalism 10mo ago
  nicotine is significantly more harmful than caffeine, although it is definitely way better than the other stuff in tobacco and not a carcinogen. let’s not get started on the CFS stuff, treatments for functional disorders are often placebo-resembling.
  - DANmode 10mo ago
    > nicotine is significantly more harmful than caffeine “Significantly” is an opinion. It’s more toxic by weight, yes. Messes with vascular more than caffeine. Both are an excellent way to screw up heart health. > let’s not get started on the CFS stuff, treatments for functional disorders are often placebo-resembling. Personally haven’t needed or wanted to use nicotine, but I have recovered from an array of chronic illnesses; I’ll get started on anything I please, thanks, especially seeing how many of my peers are hopelessly exhausted and existing on abusive amounts of caffeine/prescription stimulants to get by.
    - whimsicalism 10mo ago
      [flagged]
      - DANmode 10mo ago
        Off-topic completely now, but for your information, one last question: does your opinion cover patents who have blood test results showing Lyme, and one or more known coinfections like Bab, Bart, (all known, and treatable bacterial infections), or are you another Reddit regurgitation expert?
didntknowyou 10mo ago
although it's like milk too. exposure at an early age leads to the body producing more lactase enzyme to digest it. but lack of exposure often makes people lactose intolerant.
hshdhdhj4444 10mo ago
Also “mouse models”. The only purpose mouse models serve is to fill the popular press with sensational findings and torture a lot of mice.
- oceansky 10mo ago
  For this particular research, it's possible as only 5% of mouse experiments become available to humans. But a lot of life-saving medicaments and techniques started as mouse testings, including Penicillin, cancer drugs and the polio vaccine.
- whimsicalism 10mo ago
  the only purpose of hacker news comments is to aggravate readers with overly reductive takes
  - cwmoore 10mo ago
    Thanks, both of you, now please stop it.
- Vaslo 10mo ago
  They’re mice. I wouldn’t worry a whole lot about them.
whimsicalism 10mo ago
the section immediately after that you didn’t quote: > evidence keeps piling up. Most recently, in November 2025, a comprehensive paper (opens a new tab) published in Cell Metabolism traced the downstream molecular effects of a father mouse’s exercise regimen on sperm microRNAs that target genes “critical for mitochondrial function and metabolic control” in a developing embryo. The researchers found many of those same RNAs overexpressed in the sperm of well-exercised human men. https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(25)00388-2 https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(25)...
- jibal 10mo ago
  I and others generally don't quote things that aren't relevant to the point we're making and I'm not keen on the crypt-accusation. I didn't say that there aren't downstream molecular effects--clearly there are. Rather, the article is very unclear about the nature of epigenetics, and the wording about "transmitting traits" is misleading at best and leads to many unwarranted conclusions, as evidenced in the comments here. The statements I quoted are not about transmitting traits. e.g., "paternal exercise" refers to a trait of exercising, taking time to exercise, being motivated to exercise, etc. The "conferred benefit" of "enhanced endurance and metabolic health" is a different trait. If that is the trait being transmitted then that should be the trait being identified in male parents, not "exercise". Similarly, being exposed to nicotine is not the trait of having livers that are good at "disarming" nicotine, cocaine, and a host of other toxins ... and this is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence, and the article provides one citation, from 2017. And as an epigeneticist says in the article, we have no idea how RNA is having the effects its having. As I said, I'm happy to wait until we have moved beyond this early stage of research before making any radical inferences.
  - shwaj 10mo ago
    In the “paternal exercise” case the trait isn’t the habit of exercising, it’s the metabolic changes of exercise that are (apparently) conferred to both father and offspring.
    - 10mo ago
RobotToaster 10mo ago
I feel like the ghost of Lysenko is laughing at us.

by jibal 10mo ago

yes_man 10mo ago

Theres 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 ago
For an example, scientists discovered both viruses and genetics long before they knew the molecular basis of either of them.
jibal 10mo ago
I'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.

AlecSchueler 10mo ago

If you ignore "good" and "bad" then it's just "traits can be passed through this mechanism" egg seems a lot more reasonable.

AlecSchueler 10mo ago
s/egg/which/
- sejje 10mo ago
  You don't egg randomly inserted words?
  - cwmoore 10mo ago
    eh… can someone please accurately vibe code this for me? s/(s\\\/egg\\\/which)/s\/egg\/egg which\//
    - schemathings 10mo ago
      Now I want McDonalds McEggWhich
jibal 10mo ago
But that's not what it says. RNA fragments are entering the ovum and having some sort of effect .... that's quite different from passing traits the way genes on chromosomes do.
matt-attack 10mo ago
But shouldn’t there have been an evolutionary advantage for such a thing to develop?
- lazide 10mo ago
  Not necessarily for the individual. Some trees have mechanisms, for instance, where they die quickly but signal other trees if exposed to certain issues, allowing the other trees to put up a better defense. Ants and other insects sometimes do the same thing. Essentially a ‘jumps on the grenade’ gene.

larusso 10mo ago

I agree. The example with Nicotine intake having a somewhat positive effect on the children feels too wild at the money. Think of all the kids of the 60th and 70th. They must be immune to most toxins ;). Yes I take this example to the extreme. I also feel that this could maybe contradict what we learned from evolution theory. Why would it take so long for a given treat to establish itself. Maybe I mix too much into one bag after reading this one article.

lukan 10mo ago
If true, I suppose there is also a opportunity cost involved. Meaning selecting for better coping with nicotine, does not help selecting for smarter offspring and maybe even preventing that. So it might be somewhat positive but at a cost unknown. Also there are the very known costs of nicotine damaging sperms, or of course being in literal smoke as a child (or adult) and deal with those real effects.
sigmoid10 10mo ago
>I also feel that this could maybe contradict what we learned from evolution theory. It doesn't, but the article doesn't go into this detail, so people unfamiliar with the field wouldn't understand why. The keyword is epigenetics. I.e. how certain genes become activated or deactivated through behaviour and/or environmental influences. But the DNA sequence itself remains unaltered. So no evolution necessary. There are basically a bunch of molecules than sit on top of your DNA that regulate gene expression. They don't just tell a cell to behave like a skin cell or a brain cell, they also regulate the entire cellular metabolism. The discovery that male sperm can also transmit this epigenetic information to offspring is relatively new, but now that we know that, it makes total sense that these gene-expression-modifying behaviours in fathers could affect their children. After all, they simply get to start with a good (or bad) bunch of epigenetic markers. They will not persist across many generations though, so it has no real long term effect on evolution. It may even be an evolved mechanism that allows organisms to respond to environmental changes on timeframes that would be prohibited by evolution.
- pcl 10mo ago
  > ”They will not persist across many generations though” Why not? Is there some tempering mechanism on epigenetic transfer? I could imagine that some sperm-conferred epigenetic markers could continue down the male descendants unbroken.

DANmode 10mo ago

You took a left-turn: Nicotine is on-par with caffeine in isolation. It’s the rest of the crap in smokes and vapes to be concerned with. I was surprised to learn nicotine is used by functional doctors to treat CFS-adjacent conditions, and the mechanisms therein.

whimsicalism 10mo ago
nicotine is significantly more harmful than caffeine, although it is definitely way better than the other stuff in tobacco and not a carcinogen. let’s not get started on the CFS stuff, treatments for functional disorders are often placebo-resembling.
- DANmode 10mo ago
  > nicotine is significantly more harmful than caffeine “Significantly” is an opinion. It’s more toxic by weight, yes. Messes with vascular more than caffeine. Both are an excellent way to screw up heart health. > let’s not get started on the CFS stuff, treatments for functional disorders are often placebo-resembling. Personally haven’t needed or wanted to use nicotine, but I have recovered from an array of chronic illnesses; I’ll get started on anything I please, thanks, especially seeing how many of my peers are hopelessly exhausted and existing on abusive amounts of caffeine/prescription stimulants to get by.
  - whimsicalism 10mo ago
    [flagged]
    - DANmode 10mo ago
      Off-topic completely now, but for your information, one last question: does your opinion cover patents who have blood test results showing Lyme, and one or more known coinfections like Bab, Bart, (all known, and treatable bacterial infections), or are you another Reddit regurgitation expert?

didntknowyou 10mo ago

although it's like milk too. exposure at an early age leads to the body producing more lactase enzyme to digest it. but lack of exposure often makes people lactose intolerant.

hshdhdhj4444 10mo ago

Also “mouse models”. The only purpose mouse models serve is to fill the popular press with sensational findings and torture a lot of mice.

oceansky 10mo ago
For this particular research, it's possible as only 5% of mouse experiments become available to humans. But a lot of life-saving medicaments and techniques started as mouse testings, including Penicillin, cancer drugs and the polio vaccine.
whimsicalism 10mo ago
the only purpose of hacker news comments is to aggravate readers with overly reductive takes
- cwmoore 10mo ago
  Thanks, both of you, now please stop it.
Vaslo 10mo ago
They’re mice. I wouldn’t worry a whole lot about them.

whimsicalism 10mo ago

the section immediately after that you didn’t quote: > evidence keeps piling up. Most recently, in November 2025, a comprehensive paper (opens a new tab) published in Cell Metabolism traced the downstream molecular effects of a father mouse’s exercise regimen on sperm microRNAs that target genes “critical for mitochondrial function and metabolic control” in a developing embryo. The researchers found many of those same RNAs overexpressed in the sperm of well-exercised human men. https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(25)00388-2 https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(25)...

jibal 10mo ago
I and others generally don't quote things that aren't relevant to the point we're making and I'm not keen on the crypt-accusation. I didn't say that there aren't downstream molecular effects--clearly there are. Rather, the article is very unclear about the nature of epigenetics, and the wording about "transmitting traits" is misleading at best and leads to many unwarranted conclusions, as evidenced in the comments here. The statements I quoted are not about transmitting traits. e.g., "paternal exercise" refers to a trait of exercising, taking time to exercise, being motivated to exercise, etc. The "conferred benefit" of "enhanced endurance and metabolic health" is a different trait. If that is the trait being transmitted then that should be the trait being identified in male parents, not "exercise". Similarly, being exposed to nicotine is not the trait of having livers that are good at "disarming" nicotine, cocaine, and a host of other toxins ... and this is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence, and the article provides one citation, from 2017. And as an epigeneticist says in the article, we have no idea how RNA is having the effects its having. As I said, I'm happy to wait until we have moved beyond this early stage of research before making any radical inferences.
- shwaj 10mo ago
  In the “paternal exercise” case the trait isn’t the habit of exercising, it’s the metabolic changes of exercise that are (apparently) conferred to both father and offspring.
  - 10mo ago

RobotToaster 10mo ago

I feel like the ghost of Lysenko is laughing at us.