Slashdot Mirror
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...
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
(looks around...)
Yes.
No sig today...
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!
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/
It still won't work for giraffes stretching their necks.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
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.
Just to clarify, that is what the research is claiming:
They showed a section of DNA responsible for sensitivity to the cherry blossom scent was made more active in the mice's sperm.
Both the mice's offspring, and their offspring, were "extremely sensitive" to cherry blossom and would avoid the scent, despite never having experiencing it in their lives.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Just to clarify, this is epigenetics. They don't believe they are altering DNA, this just changes the way the traits already encoded in the DNA are expressed.
Nothing is being passed through DNA.