Epigenetics

To wipe ou memory of stress. From New Scientist: Some plants have “long-term memory”. For instance, Arrhenatherum elatius, a perennial grass species common in Europe, seems to remember drought and is better able to defend against damage from excessive sunlight than plants that haven’t been through an earlier drought. … Plants can preserve such memories across generations, at times via epigenetic mechanisms, which influence whether or not genes are expressed. Ah, a mechanism. If the plant is not using a brain, what is it using? But when Peter Crisp at the Australian National University in Canberra and his colleagues scoured the literature for examples of such memory of stressful events, they found that memory is more the exception rather than Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: A new study published in Nature by a team of Tel Aviv University, Sheba Medical Center, and University of Chicago scientists finds that RNA, considered the DNA template for protein translation, often appears with an extra letter — and this letter is the regulatory key for control of gene expression. The discovery of a novel letter marking thousands of mRNA transcripts will offer insight into different RNA functions in cellular processes and contributions to the development of disease. “Epigenetics, the regulation of gene expression beyond the primary information encoded by DNA, was thought until recently to be mediated by modifications of proteins and DNA,” said Prof. Gidi Rechavi, Djerassi Chair in Oncology at TAU’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine Read More ›

It’s all in our genes … From Brian Boutwell at Quillette: Why parenting may not matter and why most social science research is probably wrong Based on the results of classical twin studies, it just doesn’t appear that parenting—whether mom and dad are permissive or not, read to their kid or not, or whatever else—impacts development as much as we might like to think. Regarding the cross-validation that I mentioned, studies examining identical twins separated at birth and reared apart have repeatedly revealed (in shocking ways) the same thing: these individuals are remarkably similar when in fact they should be utterly different (they have completely different environments, but the same genes).3 Alternatively, non-biologically related adopted children (who have no genetic Read More ›

From New Scientist: Hot stuff. For the first time, wild mammals have been seen responding to higher temperatures by altering chemical structures on their DNA. These epigenetic changes may adjust the activity of specific genes, and some are passed on to offspring. “Global temperatures are rising. It is crucial to understand how wild species are able to cope,” says Alexandra Weyrich of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin, Germany. Evolution by genetic mutation and natural selection can be slow. But epigenetic changes that affect how genes are expressed, such as attaching methyl molecules onto DNA, are much faster and more flexible. Experiments in a type of brine shrimp and the plant Arabidopsis thaliana have shown that Read More ›

And gosh, weren’t we hoping it was a pile, but never mind… 😉 From Science: Male mice bequeath an unexpected legacy to their progeny. Two studies published online this week in Science reveal that sperm from the rodents carry pieces of RNAs that alter the metabolism of their offspring. The RNAs spotlighted by the studies normally help synthesize proteins, so the findings point to an unconventional form of inheritance. The results are “exciting and surprising, but not impossible,” says geneticist Joseph Nadeau of the Pacific Northwest Diabetes Research Institute in Seattle, Washington. “Impossible” is exactly how biologists once described so-called epigenetic inheritance, in which something other than a DNA sequence passes a trait between generations. In recent years, however, researchers Read More ›

From Pub Med: Evolution by epigenesis: farewell to Darwinism, neo- and otherwise. Follow UD News at Twitter! In the last 25 years, criticism of most theories advanced by Darwin and the neo-Darwinians has increased considerably, and so did their defense. Darwinism has become an ideology, while the most significant theories of Darwin were proven unsupportable. The critics advanced other theories instead of ‘natural selection’ and the survival of the fittest’. ‘Saltatory ontogeny’ and ‘epigenesis’ are such new theories proposed to explain how variations in ontogeny and novelties in evolution are created. They are reviewed again in the present essay that also tries to explain how Darwinians, artificially kept dominant in academia and in granting agencies, are preventing their acceptance. Epigenesis, Read More ›

From Salk Institute: Grafted plants’ genomes can communicate with each other Agricultural grafting dates back nearly 3,000 years. By trial and error, people from ancient China to ancient Greece realized that joining a cut branch from one plant onto the stalk of another could improve the quality of crops. Now, researchers at the Salk Institute and Cambridge University have used this ancient practice, combined with modern genetic research, to show that grafted plants can share epigenetic traits, according to a new paper published the week of January 18, 2016 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. … “Grafting is something done often in the commercial world, and yet, we really don’t completely understand the consequences for the two Read More ›

Further to two stories that just whistled past, Epigenetics: Altering ant behavior and Epigenetics: Mouse diet affects sperm RNA, a thought occurred to me: For many years, I’ve seen and heard people who were raised by adoptive parents obsessing about their “real” parents. They seem to believe that their DNA parents conferred on them a magic key of same kind, and they must find it in order to even know who they really are. Is that true? Why isn’t what they have been doing most of their life who they really are? Unless one has some basis for actively rejecting everything one has learned growing up, most likely, one’s “real” parents are whoever has acted as a parent over the Read More ›

From Eurekalert: Two new studies in mice demonstrate how a father’s diet affects levels of specific small RNAs in his sperm, which in turn can affect gene regulation in offspring. These results add to the growing list of ways in which a male’s lifestyle can influence his offspring, including through the sperm epigenome, microbiome transfer and seminal fluid signaling. (American Association for the Advancement of Science) More. Another reason to treat your breeding mice right. See also: Epigenetics: Altering ant behavior and Epigenetic change: Lamarck, wake up, you’re wanted in the conference room! Follow UD News at Twitter!

From New York Times: Among Florida carpenter ants there are the so-called majors, brawny soldiers that guard the colony, and the smaller minors that act as foragers. But membership in these castes is not set in stone, a new study found. By treating ants with chemical compounds, researchers were able to make young majors behave like minors. The compound manipulates the ants’ epigenetic makeup, which governs which genes are turned on and off but does not alter their DNA. “These are long-term, permanent changes that occur when we inject the brain with these chemicals,” said Shelley Berger, an epigeneticist at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the study’s authors. More. See also: Epigenetic change: Lamarck, wake up, you’re wanted Read More ›

If this isn’t a hoax, we wonder how long it’ll last: Here: A new study refutes one published earlier this year that claimed random mutations were at the root of many tumors. Only 10 to 30 percent of cancer cases can be attributed to random mutations in DNA, according to a study published this week (December16) in Nature. Rather, the majority of cancer cases stem from carcinogens such as toxic chemicals and radiation, the researchers found. … “There’s no question what’s at stake here,” John Potter of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, who was not involved in which study told Nature. “This informs whether or not we expend energy on prevention.”More. The wild card here is Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: The world of epigenetics — where molecular ‘switches’ attached to DNA turn genes on and off — has just got bigger with the discovery by a team of scientists from the University of Cambridge of a new type of epigenetic modification. … Epigenetics has so far focused mainly on studying proteins called histones that bind to DNA. Such histones can be modified, which can result in genes being switched on or of. In addition to histone modifications, genes are also known to be regulated by a form of epigenetic modification that directly affects one base of the DNA, namely the base C. More than 60 years ago, scientists discovered that C can be modified directly through a process Read More ›

Thousands of them, some say. Well, that’ll scare some guys onto the track. From From New Scientist: “Our results suggest that environmentally driven changes carried in sperm cells could represent a mechanism by which obesity is transmitted to the next generation,” says Romain Barrès of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. He suggests his findings might lead parents-to-be to consider changing their behaviour before conceiving. We already know that a child’s weight seems to be highly linked to that of their parents. So far, much research into how obesity is passed on has focused on mothers and their diet before or during pregnancy. But the new study suggests that the father’s health may also be important. Comparing the sperm of Read More ›

Well, that’s how The Scientist describes it: How one generation’s experience can affect the next Caution! The article begins by denouncing the crackpot theories of Lysenko along these lines, and piously informs us that “science” has since discovered that there is something in epigenetics after all. Any history that leaves out the ridicule to which Lamarck was routinely subjected, without justification, by Darwin’s followers is revisionism, pure and simple. But then, the people responsible have some butt to cover, right? Meanwhile, Not only is epigenetic information inherited during cellular division, but it can also be passed from one generation to the next in multicellular organisms, a phenomenon known as transgenerational epigenetics. This requires that epigenetic information be carried in the Read More ›

Further to A biologist explains epigenetics: Picture an orchestra (DNA is only the violin section), … From The Scientist : Antidepressant Exerts Epigenetic Changes … “Depression is considered a stress-related disease and it has been known for a while that stress can change long-term behavior, probably by reprogramming gene activity,” said study coauthor Theo Rein of Max Planck. Several groups previously demonstrated that environmental factors could influence epigenetic changes associated with psychiatric disorders, including depression. Different classes of antidepressant drugs have also been found to induce epigenetic changes in both animal brain cells and in clinical studies. “In depression, we’ve seen alterations in gene expression that coincide with DNA methylation and other epigenetic changes,” explained Rein. The present study builds Read More ›