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With RNA, Researchers Transfer Memories Between Sea Slugs
In the first chunk of their study, the team, led by David Glanzman, worked with groups of a marine slug called Aplysia. One group of slugs got shocked on the tail once every 20 minutes for a total of five shocks. The next day, they went through the same shock session. The point was to prime them to use what's called a defensive withdraw reflex — basically, the slug version of a flinch.
When Glanzman and his team later physically tapped these slugs on their tails, the creatures contracted for an average of 50 seconds. But when the team tapped another, shock-free group, those slugs only shied away for about one second.
Here's where things get interesting. The researchers then extracted ribonucleic acid (RNA) — the cellular messenger that carries out the genetic instructions of DNA — from the nervous systems of both the shock and non-shock groups. They took this RNA and injected it into a third set of slugs that hadn't had to deal with any shocks or taps. Seven of these slugs got the shock group's RNA, seven got the non-shock-group's RNA.
Next, the team tapped these RNA-injected slugs on their tails. Those that had received the shock group's RNA responded almost exactly like the shock group: They recoiled for about 40 seconds. "It was as though we transferred the memory," Glanzman said in a press release.
Also at Smithsonian Magazine.
RNA from Trained Aplysia Can Induce an Epigenetic Engram for Long-Term Sensitization in Untrained Aplysia (open, DOI: 10.1523/ENEURO.0038-18.2018) (DX)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 16 2018, @02:26PM (2 children)
There must be genes for ramping up the recoil response based on irritating stimuli.
With enough irritation, those genes start getting expressed, meaning that RNA for those genes starts getting produced, which means certain proteins and other structures start getting produced from the RNA.
So, if you take that RNA and then move it to another individual, then its cells sill start doing what that RNA says it should do, which thus yields the long recoil-response.
Can you call this a 'memory'? Is DNA, for example, a 'memory' because it encodes past experiences, decisions, selection, etc.? Or, should it be called something else?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 16 2018, @03:54PM (1 child)
While I recommend the book version of Cosmos by Carl Sagan, the corresponding documentary series also works. Don't have my dead tree copy in front of me right now, but I think it's chapter 11 as well as episode 11: "The Persistence of Memory."
Sagan uses the analogy (iirc) of a city like New York with newer structures build on top of older structures, such that the older structures are still present and functioning alongside newer structures. The newer structures never (entirely) supersede the older ones. There was also an analogy of higher, newer brain functions in mammals working alongside yet not superseding older ones from reptiles for example.
He puts forward the idea that DNA is a kind of memory. It allows very slow adaptation. Adaptations that don't work well aren't easy to get rid of. New adaptations aren't easy to acquire. Then comes the invention of a large brain so young can learn from parents. Adaptation speeds up. One that don't work can be discarded more quickly and ones that work well can come into wider adoption more quickly. Then some talking apes invent writing, which is a more powerful kind of memory. Adaptation speeds up.
Don't remember if that's the exact language he uses, but I'm pretty sure that's the general idea. Flame away if my memory fails me.
Personal speculation: I wonder what the talking apes will do once they grasp the capability to start ripping up and revamping those older, slower kinds of memory operating on geological time scales with many failsafes from a billion of years of trial and error such as DNA. Probably zombie apocalypse, but it couldn't have happened to a nicer species.
(Score: 2) by lentilla on Thursday May 17 2018, @03:03AM
Kanye West is working on that. It's called the Kardashian Epoch.