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Acquired Characteristics May Be Inheritable

Posted by kdawson on from the Lamarck's-revenge dept.

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."

8 of 242 comments (clear)

  1. Interesting... by drosboro · · Score: 5, Informative

    Lamarck is one of those guys who's name is generally synonymous with bad science (he's about as villified as Darwin is deified). I'm actually a bit (pleasantly) surprised that someone would invest the time into this sort of study.

    That being said, the article is rather short in one important area: a suggested mechanism for this sort of inheritance. Without that, it's bound to be mired in controversy for some time.

    1. Re:Interesting... by MoellerPlesset2 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Lamarck is one of those guys who's name is generally synonymous with bad science (he's about as villified as Darwin is deified).

      What? I've heard Larmarck's evolutionary ideas ridiculed but villified?
      He wasn't that unscientific. He was just wrong.

      Or are you thinking of Lysenko? Now that particular advocate of inherited-acquired-characteristics was indeed a villain, a lousy scientist and a political tool.

    2. Re:Interesting... by cryptoluddite · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:Interesting... by Kandenshi · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    4. Re:Interesting... by drosboro · · Score: 5, Informative

      Actually, I've just taken a peek at the original article in J. Neuroscience, as posted in the comments below.

      The interesting thing is that this seems to be passed on at embryogenesis - so it's quite distinct from learning. It's also quite distinct from other epigenetic inheritance studies, which have demonstrated that some of mom's behaviour can result in changes in the offspring's tissues. If this is in fact happening at the embryo stage, it is a whole different pathway.

    5. Re:Interesting... by im_thatoneguy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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

  2. Actual article by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here's the actual article.

  3. Histone modifications by Rand310 · · Score: 5, Informative

    We're just learning that Histone/DNA modifications can be inherited.

    Histones (the spools around which DNA is stored) tell when the DNA source code should be 'active' vs 'inactive'. And these histones have a huge data space in the form of possible modifications (methylation, acetylation, etc.).

    When DNA is replicated, these histones too are replicated at the same time. And they seem to be replicated in a semiconserved manner similar to DNA (half go to 'old' strand, half go to 'new' strand). And that there is a whole series of touring-like proteins that can 'read' 'write' or 'erase' these modifications.

    If these modifications are made during an organism's life, they can be inherited by offspring.

    Not only is the code being copied, but the 'marks' that tell which/when/where to read the code at any given time/condition too can be passed down. And that these marks can be written in real time rather than waiting for mutations in the code itself.

    There was a recent study that XO females who inherited the X from their father had markedly different dispositions than those who inherited the X from their mother. DNA modification that is unique to how the male or female deal with their own X chromosome could be being passed down to offspring.