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."

Comments

Poor mice

[captaindomon]

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?

Re:Poor mice

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

Anyway, compare that to the stresses imposed by society on humans. Alarm clocks, driving to work, job stress and anxiety, family matters, bills to pay, house and mortgage, etc. It's different but since we have a longer lifespan I'd say we have it worst than the mice.

Also, since this is Slashdot, I'll add that at least those mice were allowed to have sex.

Re:Poor mice

[Nyder]

I agree, this is inhumane to do to mice. We should just start making clones of humans so we can do the experiments on them.

Re:Poor mice

[Kohath]

Oh no, exposure to marbles!

Re:Poor Mice

[Gadget_Guy]

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?

There are websites that you can find to show that some humans do exactly the same sort of thing. On the other hand, mice don't watch reality TV shows so that's a win for them!

Re:Poor mice

[Radish03]

It's actually the withdrawal symptoms with that one. Have you ever seen a mouse who's lost his marbles?

Flynn effect

[avandesande]

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.

Re:Relevant for humans?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here:

http://www.livescience.com/32860-why-do-medical-researchers-use-mice.html

Fifth paragraph.

You're welcome, although you did not deserve it.

Immigration

[gurps_npc]

Modern common sense (which is often wrong), believes that:

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,

Re:Immigration

[techno-vampire]

Actually, many first-generation immigrants are quite successful, at least by their own standards. They have much better lives than they would have had if they'd stayed home, and are able to send their children to college, something that they'd never have dreamt of doing in the Old Country. Just because they don't end up in the 1% doesn't mean that they're not a success.

Re:Was Darwin partially wrong then?

[alvinrod]

Darwin just wasn't aware of epigenetics, but that doesn't make him wrong. Like many other scientific theories, we do additional studies and and refine the theories when we find results that they fail to explain or results that contradict our hypotheses. This isn't something completely new, but we're just scratching at the surfaces of how it works.

Here's one particular study in the area that's particularly interesting. What the researchers found was that people who's grandparents had suffered through a famine had lower mortality rates for certain diseases. What we're learning is that our DNA has some feedback mechanisms to environmental responses and isn't just a simple matter of passing along traits through genes. It's some really fascinating stuff.

Re:And to think someone got paid for this....

[x0ra]

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..

Lysenkoism?

[Locke2005]

After 60 years, we've turned around and decided discredited Russian biologist Trofim Lysenko was actually right??

65%

[thinkwaitfast]

Is this one of those unduplicateable experiments?