Slashdot Mirror
Paternal Stress Is Passed To Offspring (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers have discovered that stress experienced by male mice can be passed on to their offspring. "In earlier work, these scientists exposed male mice to six weeks of alternating stressors like 36 hours of constant light, a 15-minute exposure to fox odor, exposure to a novel object (marbles) overnight, 15 minutes of restraint in a 50 mL conical tube, multiple cage changes, white noise all night long, or saturated bedding.
Then the scientists allowed the mice to breed (abstract). Adult offspring of these chronically stressed dads had reduced hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal stress axis reactivity; when they themselves were restrained for 15 minutes, they did not make as much corticosterone as mice sired by relaxed dads. This is relevant, and problematic, because blunted stress responses in humans are associated with neuropsychiatric disorders like depression, schizophrenia, and autism."
Then the scientists allowed the mice to breed (abstract). Adult offspring of these chronically stressed dads had reduced hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal stress axis reactivity; when they themselves were restrained for 15 minutes, they did not make as much corticosterone as mice sired by relaxed dads. This is relevant, and problematic, because blunted stress responses in humans are associated with neuropsychiatric disorders like depression, schizophrenia, and autism."
Seems like a pretty barbaric test on the subjects. I know, for the greater good and everything etc. etc., but at some point where do we draw the line and say this isn't humane to perform?
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
tag
Fearful parents have crazy kids
Suddenly the Middle East makes sense.
And certain political groups.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
If a dude works out a lot, their kids won't be born with super massive muscles, no matter what you might think from watching Dragon Ball Z. Genetics doesn't work that way.
So, no, it isn't "obvious - common sense" when we do discover new things that we would think won't be passed on, but in actuality, do get passed on.
As expected based on what's seen in humans.
Some reading: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3713176/ and more accessible: http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2010/05/05/racism-behind-disgracefulinfant-mortality-rates-among-africanamericans/
It seems like stress can have an impact on our genetic system that can be passed down to the offspring. Seems like an evolution not just based on natural selection but also based on the parent gene's experience as well. This is just a long shot, I am not an expert on this by any means!
This could explain the Flynn effect, which still exists when controlling for nutrition. I've often thought this is why problems can persist in children of extreme poverty and can persist over generations.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Unless humans women are breeding with male mice, I don't see this as being immediately relevant. Something to test for, to be sure, but there are some minor differences between the species.
"Another investigation highlighted that a sharp change in food availability in paternal grandmothers' resulted in an increased risk of cardiovascular mortality in granddaughters adults' life" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96verkalix_study)
Not only what you do can be passed to you children, but maybe also what your parents did!
Suppose this applies to humans the same as mice. How long do you think it takes for the effects of stress to show up in RNA, and how long does it take for it to be cleared? Of course there's there's some delay because of sperm production, but I didn't see any other info about the time required in that abstract. (Probably makes sense that it would be a study of its own.)
Depending on how rapid the onset and falloff are, it might be pretty reasonable to say "yeah, that was a pretty bad couple weeks, let's put off trying for kids for a month".
I'm bearing a lot of stress from the implications of this new finding. The prospect of passing this stress to my child stresses me.
1) First generation immigrants work very hard, but rarely become successful themselves. They live a very high stress life, but do manage to send their kids to college...
2) Second generation immigrants succeed far beyond their parents, becoming doctors, lawyers, and other upper class positions. By the time they father children, they usually have made it, and live with less stress than their parents.
3) Whereupon their children have no stress and become wastrels,
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Do not lock self, children in 50ml tube.
We're talking epigenetics here, so environmentally driven gene expression in the father might be passed down to the kid. Beside, a father working out is more likely to have a proper nutrition and saner lifestyle (better sleep pattern, less partying / drinking, less overall stress), and thus give good habit to his kid giving him key to succeed..
And that's why It's called Humane and not Animalane. That rat just ate it's own shit and fucked it's mother in the cage. I guess we aren't more intelligent and superior?
Give me a break.
Visit me please.... i'm from indonesia...
http://komunitasbelajarkomputer.blogspot.co.id/
Imagine the kind of stress they will pass on...
What doesn't kill you makes your kids weaker?
It's called epigenetics.
https://www.google.com/search?...
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
After 60 years, we've turned around and decided discredited Russian biologist Trofim Lysenko was actually right??
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
He theorized that organisms adapt to their environment. If the environment causes stress in the parents you should expect to see changes in the offspring as a result.
(in mice)
Typical headline soundbite bullshit.
Is this one of those unduplicateable experiments?
Study of Holocaust survivors finds trauma passed on to children's genes
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/21/study-of-holocaust-survivors-finds-trauma-passed-on-to-childrens-genes
All the people I know who work out have the worse life styles. The fatter people just eat too much bad food. The ones working out party more, drink more, and often do drugs. They have more stress in trying to keep their body looking good for night 'conquests' than the people who accept their physical makeup and do other things.
But that's only because of the strange idea most people have about exercise, that it's meant to make you look pumped up instead of improving your health and wellbeing. I don't go to the gym because I don't want to meet these idiots. I work out by myself because it makes me feel good and because it might give me a couple more years of autonomous life than my car-driving, couch-sitting parents who both died early after long illness. Looking younger is a nice side effect, feeling younger is what matters.
1) Not shit Sherlock, to the entire paper
2) Human beings aren't mice. What sort of cretin can't even understand that?
This is yet another example of the tens of thousands of pointless examples of vivisection that take place every year.
All along I thought this was a rat race. I guess it's only been mice. Not as bad, when you think about it.
Did they impregnate the female mice by hand artificial insemination, or just let the male interact with the female? If the latter, how do they know it was not stress effects passed from the male to the female, and then to the offspring? I did not see anything in the paper that mentioned they controlled for this. I really hate reading papers where they just assume everything is done properly and attempt to infer indirect molecular effects of environmental factors. Until they show they have put in place the proper controls this is junk science.
the "I learned it by watching you!" anti-drug commercial of the '80s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
It is amazing how things that aren't obviously genetic can be so linked to parentage ... I can understand hair color, facial structure, height, etc, but some behaviors like facial expression, or posture, or even complex behaviors like hoarding that I used to assume were entirely learned just seem too spookily similar from one generation to the next for them to be only imitation. Of course maybe they *are* just imitation anyhow, but I like to hope not ;)
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5