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Smoking Mothers May Alter the DNA of Their Children
sciencehabit (1205606) writes "Pregnant women who smoke don't just harm the health of their baby—they may actually impair their child's DNA, according to new research. A genetic analysis shows that the children of mothers who smoke harbor far more chemical modifications of their genome — known as epigenetic changes — than kids of non-smoking mothers. Many of these are on genes tied to addiction and fetal development. The finding may explain why the children of smokers continue to suffer health complications later in life.
What about smokers who abstain from smoking during pregnancy but otherwise chain smoke through life?
Perhaps there are people dumb enough to smoke while pregnant, but the alterations make their offspring less dumb. This is just a possibility. 'Alter' does not necessarily mean bad.
On gun rights activists, obviously.
Probably why they are Mothers in the first place.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Epigenetics also affected people in the Dutch famine of 1944 (paper, http link to paper). The children of mothers that were in the famine were smaller than average, and those children, too.
you could also write that as "Smoking mothers promote evolutionary progress". I mean if you wanted to.
We've no more real external pressure to evolve beyond where we are now. we're all "fit enough" to pork each other.
Now we need genetic externalities and epigenetic lateral transfer to progress as a species.
Just sayin'
-Space donkey
On the other white men who stole tobacco from the original inhabitants of these lands and forced these women to smoke through trickery and deceit.
ON smokers, and the industry that keeps paying money to prevent their cancer causing products to be regulated by the FDA so they can keep the chemicals they use under wraps.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Well, it certainly explains the generation that was born from all those hippies in the 60s.
Just eat blueberries, the antioxidants can reverse some of the methylation
Blueberries guys
I was born in the 1950's, LONG before the surgeon general came out saying smoking was bad for you. Heck, the commercials of that era, had doctors advertising cigarettes! When my mother became pregnant with me, she was 25. When "the rabbit died" she quit until after I stopped nursing. Same thing for my younger sister 2 years later. Both of my parents quit for good in the early 70's after repeated nagging from myself, my younger sister & my older sister. Both are alive & well in their 80's now. Even before the facts were really known about smoking, a lot of my parents friends wives quit smoking when they were pregnant. I see pregnant women today smoking and just shake my head. Oh well, it's a free country...even if you aren't quite so smart.
They are one of those few groups who shouldn't get any healthcare at all. Even when their problem is seemingly unrelated to smoking.
Diabetes.
Obesity.
Starvation.
These all result in epigenetic changes to the DNA of a fetus.
What's REALLY interesting/scary is that these changes themselves can be inherited.
One of the best groups that has been followed and studied are survivors of starvation in the ghettos of WWII, polish ghetos IIRC.
We've seen that children who were born to mothers who were actively starving during pregnancy, are more prone to the "thrifty" phenotype, more prone to abnormal weight gain and obesity, than those who's gestation was before or after. Analysis of their genes has shown they had changes in the methylation of certain key genes compared to their parents or peers, altering their expression. In other words, the cells of the developing fetus adapted to the stress they were exposed to, resulting in LIFE LONG ALTERATIONS in the EXPRESSION of their DNA. The DNA itself, DID NOT CHANGE, yet they had different expressions of those same genes, for the rest of their life!
Crazy, right? Well, wait for this next bit, it'll really bake your noodle.
The GRANDCHILDREN of those women who were starving while pregnant *inherited* the changes to their parent's DNA (male AND female parents!), even if their mother did not undergo the same stress that their grandmothers did. The altered phenotype they express may be less severe then that of their parent, but they maintain those altered methylation patterns.
Another way we are finding this is children of women who are obese and/or hyperglycemic (gestational diabetes or poor diabetes control) are more prone to obesity or type 2 diabetes themselves, independent of post-gestational life. And if their mothers happen to have a gastric bypass and lose significant weight, then have another pregnancy? The children conceived after the weight loss seem to be no more likely to have weight issues or diabetes than children of non-obese women.
On the one hand, this is exciting, because a whole new field of study is blossoming as we watch!
On the other hand, even if we get the current obesity epidemic under control, or even reverse it, we're going to be feeling the effects for, literally, generations. Sins of the parents, indeed...
(PS: And, no, I don't mean that to mean the children are being divinely punished for their parents acts. Give me a break, poetic license in a crappy situation.)
I am sure there will be moms who want to make their kids the next X-man by smoking now
The changes probably make the child more tolerant to environmental pollution, so there!
Not surprised, I still smoke and feel way more physically and mentally addicted to that, then say alcohol which I gave up years ago.
Get up!
Title got my attention and worried me a little bit.
So do you need to smoke the mother before or after she's given birth to alter her childrens' DNA?
@Whee
Given that marijuana causes neural changes and alters distribution of grey matter, it would be interesting to learn how it affects the DNA of children born to mothers that smoke it recreationally.
Adopt. That's what we did. My sons birth mother could hardly afford food, much less cigarettes. The 3rd world may suck for many things but they don't chain smoke and there sure as hell aren't any crack addicted parents.
Kidding aside, you should adopt. There are children in need, and I love my kid as much, if not more than any kid I could have gotten the old fashion way. We were very lucky he needed parents.
steaming, sauteing, or even poaching will keep them plump & juicy
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
But being a man, I was always smart about which cigarettes I bought. I never bought the ones that caused cancer and all that other scary shit. I only smoked the ones that caused low birth weight and pregnancy complications. I figured since I would never be pregnant, those were the ones to go with. I could never figure out why the brands would keep switching though. ;-)
Children who smoke their mothers have bigger issues than DNA alterations.
They will likely come out and say it's not the smoking that's causing the damage.
It's the fact that the government is now forcing everyone to go outside for a cigarette, exposing them to all that extra, harmful UV radiation, thats causing the damage.
Everything is bad. Don't do anything, ever.
I grew up in a haze of tobacco smoke with two heavy smoking parents. In the home, in the car, basically any time I spent with them I was exposed. As an adult living in a apartment building I regularly experience coughing and teary eyes from smoke that comes through from the hallway. It'll probably never happen but I'd be utterly thrilled is tobacco was entirely banned.
The key word is "may". For the illiterate ... "may" = "I Don't Know". In other words, this is another Jenny McCarthy Fear Monger article.
I'm one of many slashdotters (I'm sure) who's mother smoked while pregnant, drank (no doubt) as this behaviour wasn't seen as bad in the times (I was born in '59). No drugs, I suspect - can't imagine my mother (she's been gone 30 years) doing that!.
I'm not saying that smoking/drinking isn't bad for the unborn child, but the odds may not be as loaded that way as you'd think. And my parents both smoked all the way to their deaths. I've never smoked.
And yes, I'm normal - why do you ask?
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
Actually, they were bigger. Around.
My mother smoked and for the most part I am healthy at 46. Non smoker myself. What if it was the reason I was born with the knack?
I was raised by a single mother with a grade 6 education, sometimes on welfare, no role models to encourage me to go into engineering, no resources to learn electronics or computers etc. When I was young I thought I was adopted because somehow I got the geek gene that was not present before in the family with understanding and knowledge that I seemed to have been born with and became a successful electrical engineer. Maybe it was the smoking.
Even though smoking is statistically and significantly harmful in many ways, what if some other mutants from the 60's pass on genes that lets their distant offspring survive or prosper in the future. Evolution needs mutation, does it not? Oh, perhaps not. We'll be programming our own genes soon enough I guess.
Smoking Mothers would be a good name for a band.
No such thing.. only 'earlier inhabitants' in the context you're framing.. and they were conquered because they were weak.
My eldest brother has asthma.
My Dad smoked. He gave up before his second child was conceived. The rest of us don't have asthma.
That's a great word which in the world of science reporting means: This story is a filler, if you don't have much time then skip this one.
Well, it's monday so it's Apple's fault.
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Many viruses affect tulips, causing streaked flowers, mottled leaves, distorted plants and stunted growth.
One evil virus is the tobacco mosaic virus and yes it impacts animals too.
For 50 years that I know many greenhouses for cut flowers have prohibited tobacco products
and sterilize their cutting knives.
Of interest a new virus has been found to infect the gut of many humans. It has only recently
been identified and the value it provides to the human gut is the hot new research topic.
The risks to humans from the the tobacco mosaic virus seem to be ignored in much
of the tobacco cancer research.... I think that is a blunder. I also want to make sure the
Colorado grower associations take precautions to keep the tobacco mosaic virus out
of their herb patches.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
So environmental factors result in DNA changes...is that new?
I thought that those of us not blinded by religion were already of the opinion that this is part of evolution, adaptation, survival of the fittest and all that good stuff....
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Having pretty much been through the same thing...raised by a smoking mom and grandparents, working with smokers until it was banned in our offices in the 80s, etc., etc....I can relate. That said, I'll never support a ban. Why? Because just like anything else you're told you can't have, it encourages people who want to rebel (typically teenagers). And, because I'm typically not in favor of telling someone what they can or cannot do, as long as they're not affecting someone else. Obviously, this would mean that they'd need to be responsible for all the added expense of places to smoke away from everyone else, added insurance expenses, etc.
Just another day in Paradise
I cannot even begin to understand the reason why a pregnant "mother" would smoke...
Seriously... I'm already so sick and tired of smokers total disregard for their own and other peoples health and lives while you have other desperately striving for it that sometimes, for very few seconds I wish that the smokers become immediately impotent and the women barren so that their self destructiveness leave the gene pool already... yes, its extream, but most of the time irresponsible, dumb people cannot realize things another way
When I was born, my father stopped drinking and my mother started drinking. No one ever told me why.
... you might burn your mom's breast
If you're "allergic" to "something" in plant smoke, I am afraid YOU are the broken one, and attempting to accommodate you or propagate your genetic line is not rational and should not be encouraged.
Modern Hebrew was so 5 minutes ago. We're on Post-Modern Hebrew now and I've heard that Neo-Modern Hebrew will be here any second now!
Epigenitic changes are not changes in DNA, pretty much by definition. They are the differences in gene expression caused by the chemistry of the surrounding environment. It is a fairly new field with the goal of finding the causes of differences between genetically identical subjects. The title should read, smoking expectant mothers adjust their body chemistry, possibly with long term impacts on their children's development.