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Scientists Find Olfactory "Memory" Passed Between Generations In Mice
New submitter Raging Bool writes "The BBC is reporting that acquired phobias or aversions by mice can be passed on to subsequent generations. From the article: 'Experiments showed that a traumatic event could affect the DNA in sperm and alter the brains and behavior of subsequent generations. A Nature Neuroscience study shows mice trained to avoid a smell passed their aversion on to their 'grandchildren.''"
Score one for Lamarkian evolution. (And epigenetics). I knew Darwin was wrong...
can an aversion to working for a living be passed on through DNA as well?
This explains why babies see the windows splash screen and begin crying.
BTW, turns out Lamarck got it right.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Yeah, story-justifying techno-babble actually meets reality. Maybe there was some sort of elaborate conspiracy to keep this from us.
These "scientists" suggest that the "DNA" of the offspring was modified.
In fact, the Flying Spaghetti Monster has modified their results to look this way.
The truth is that His Noodly Appendage is wrapped around each living being and their offspring.
When something happens to a living being, the Flying Spaghetti Monster transfers the sensation down His appendage to the offspring.
RAmen!
See, Lamarck was just like Tesla - a genius ahead of his time! Darwin/Edison gets all the glory but finally science catches up to the genius of Lamarck/Tesla.
I predict Rube Goldberg is next - his designs just seem insanely complicated, but it will turn out that a mousetrap really is a required step in every mechanical process...
It's a HUGE jump from finding that traumatic events can alter DNA to finding that training can used to pass specific behaviours through DNA.
Animus coming soon
The grandkids had enhanced receptors for that particular smell. They specifically did not test for, and point out in the paper that they do not claim that the AVERSION was passed on, only that F1 and F2 had structures in the brain that are enlarged compared to control, and that are associated with the sense of smell for the chemical that was used to prime the F0 generation.
Much better science-savvy writeup by my cousin on the Nat Geo blog:
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/12/01/mice-inherit-specific-memories-because-epigenetics/
FTFA: "They showed a section of DNA responsible for sensitivity to the cherry blossom scent was made more active in the mice's sperm." Oh. Gotcha. THAT section of DNA. Amazing that there are sections of DNA presumably responsible for 'sensitivity' to every possible scent, sound, and visual pattern. Either this is the worst bit of scientific journalism or the worst bit of science I've read in years.
Everybody knows that mice inherit the smell of cheese.
But the successful ones avoid it, unless it comes with the smell of dead mouse.
That's why they say:
The second mouse gets the cheese.
Techno-babble: a term used by non-nerds to describe speech or writing by those more educated than them that they don't understand.
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Are dumb.
Instead they should have created an aversion against rotating
iron wire objects and mazes.
Although I don't have any evidence (this is /.), it seems clear that this is probably simply yet another manifestation of DNA methylation.
As I understand it, most of the genome is modulated and/or inactivated by DNA methylation of primarily CpG sites (aparently to prevent junk dna from running amok like in cancer, but also to control differentiation/specialization and). Although the mechanisms and pathways for this are currently not well understood, it seems likely that the proteins that governed the response to this stimulus was effectively coded in the DNA already, but inhibited by DNA methylation. By changing the methylation in the DNA of the gametes this response was able to be passed through to the offspring.
The bigger question is how the methylation is done. If it is done by environmental exposure (e.g, the brain and the gamete cells are over-exposed to the same stimulus from the bloodstream and respond the the same way by changing the methylation pattern to favor a response to that stimulus), that seems fairly straightforward. If, however, the brain can create simulation that causes specific methylation in the gamets, that is a whole nuther ball of wax...
In this experiment they targeted a specific olfactory pathway in the mice (Olfr151) and trained them with a behavior. Apparently, in later generations there was less methylation of the gene corresponding to this pathway providing a more enhanced response to this smell and apparently learned to distinguish this smell better. To me that isn't transferring a memory, it's really more like pre-conditioning to match a learned state.
The difference is subtle, but one way to look at it it like earning money vs inheriting it where the memory is the "how-to-make-money" part and the dna-methylation pattern is the "money". Although the offspring still have money, their behavior is not necessarily the same as the parents.
From the Vatican...eventually. Will the scientific community be more eager to do the same with LaMark?
BTW: Both Darwin and LaMark were correct. Genes' expression, dictated by experience and culture, can be passed on, activating an otherwise inactive gene in later generations.
Yes, I know you had kidding on your mind. I just wanted to get the science straight.
A Google search on "discredited soviet era biologist" produces, as its top match, a link to info on Lysenko...who pretty much got Stalin's blessing by touting a genetic theory, reviled and rebutted ever since, that such things are as now reported in mice could be used to change organisms...like Mensheviks. Ooops!
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
I can't believe this wasn't mentioned in the article... seems like a repeatable experiment to prove its existence.
love is just extroverted narcissism
I thought it was the words in a Star Trek script indicating that the actor should just like totally make some shit up or something.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
No, no it's not, you damned troll.
Of course there's some made-up shit in any science fiction -- dilythium crystals, mitichlorians, grabonic radiation (that one's mine), but most "technobabble" is actually real words, or words made up from Greek or Latin roots that describe the fictional technology (like "tachyons"). A literate, educated person can make the meanings out by context.
I wrote about that in my journal today. A friend read Nobots and some of the words weren't in her vocabulary. "Those big words -- are they real or can I look 'em up in a dictionary?" Of course, she's not a nerd.
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PS - The word "robotics" was coined to discuss a fictional piece of engineering, as when Asimov coined it, robots didn't exist.
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This is big news, if you think about it. Really big news. For a long time I've heard the term "genetic memory", but it didn't make sense that such a thing would exist. Yet, when you work with dogs, there are certain breeds which seem to know exactly what their job is and how to do it. It is amazing to see a herding-breed dog, for instance, which has never seen sheep before, start herding them within a few minutes of being introduced to the animal. Intuitively, people have always seemed to know that learned behavior can be passed down to offspring. And now we've found a mechanism by which it can happen.
Proverbs 21:19
Yeah, you dismiss a scientific study because the vocabulary is over your head on a nerd site but I'm the troll?
Go back to 4chan, you noncompos.
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There's nothing "over my head" about throwing out a string of vaguely scientific terms in a way that's frequently semantically meaningless and pretending you said something. It's a cheap mechanic for sci-fi writers who can't write.
I know what "Neutrino flux" means(because both of these concepts are dead simple, in actual physics), and that means understanding why it's a bullshit explanation for why "luck gets reversed"(guess which technobabble laden sci-fi that's from). It's about the difference between lazy, poorly communicated writing that relies on a thousand deus-ex-machinas to get through its premise and science fiction that raises interesting questions.
I'm sorry your taste is poor and your level of ignorance is sufficient that you're impressed by people talking about arbitrary combinations of sub-atomic particles in conjunction with arbitrary measurement systems, but I felt better about you when I thought you were a troll, and not an oblivious moron.
I don't think that word means what you think it means...
Pure use of funds and ethically dubious, maybe, but how is this fraudulent?
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
We weren't discussing sci-fi when you called it technobabble, we were discussing a study that you called technobabble.
Now go away.
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