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Acquired Characteristics May Be Inheritable
A story from a week or so back in Technology Review describes research coming to the surprising conclusion that Jean-Baptiste Lamarck may have been right — that acquired characteristics can be passed on to offspring, at least in rodents. Lamarck's ideas have been controversial for 200 years, and dismissed in mainstream scientific thinking for nearly that long. "In Feig's study, mice genetically engineered to have memory problems were raised in an enriched environment — given toys, exercise, and social interaction — for two weeks during adolescence. The animals' memory improved... The mice were then returned to normal conditions, where they grew up and had offspring. This next generation of mice also had better memory, despite having the genetic defect and never having been exposed to the enriched environment."
Article doesn't say what interactions the adult mice had with their offspring. The benefit may have just been passed to the next generation through regular learning, modeling, etc.
I don't know about lab mice, but rat packs have a pretty complicated social structure (for example nominating food tasters to try new sources of food) so I'd bet that mice can teach their young a lot more than researchers might suppose.
Here's my personal suggested mechanism.
Enriched environments have long been known to make mice 'happier' in addition to being better at solving various tests, and having larger brains, etc. This stress-reducing effect has been known to be maintained long after the rats are removed from the enriched environment.
The change in the mother rats should fully be expected to be partially shared with the pups. The womb is not a completely separate environment that just happens to exist inside the mother, her experiences shape what sort of chemicals(beneficial or detrimental) are delivered to the baby.
A healthier, less stressed out mother is likely to nurture her babies properly while they're in utero, and uterine environment that's not bathed in stress hormones is generally a preferable one for the baby's neurological development.
TFA also mentions that an opposite effect occurs, where highly stressed mothers had babies that then also abused their pups tend to have pups that themselves are poorer mothers. They don't mention if problem solving tests were given to these rats, but I'd fully expect that they'd show deficits in tests of memory and intelligence.
The researchers in the article say that this is a completely shocking discovery, I'd be shocked if it didn't happen. The stress response affects not only the mother, but also the baby, and those changes can be noticed in their later lives. Quel surprise.
How is that a shortcoming of science?
1) The researches found a result.
2) Proposed a possible mechanism.
3) Stated the mechanism was untested and might just be bullshit they cooked up at the pub.
4) People misreport guess of researchers as "Fact!" ...
6) "Shortcoming of science!" (and profit?)
It's sort of like saying that the urban legand "People think we only use 10% of our brain even though research has shown this to be almost certainly false." is a shortcoming of science.
People talk. People like to have "all the answers". The problem is with gossip not science. 'Science' hasn't ruled on the subject yet. The official stance of 'science' is that the mechanism is unknown.
Just as 'science' has only found that mouse mothers subjected to certain conditions can pass along the effects to their children even after the conditions have ceased. The mechanism should be discovered before any other conclusions can be reached. The summary is attempting to assign far more consequence to the study than study can provide. The shortcoming is with vague and speculative reporting not science. /rant