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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Offspring may inherit legacy of their father's Toxoplasma infection
Studying mice infected with the common parasite Toxoplasma, the team discovered that sperm of infected fathers carried an altered 'epigenetic' signature which impacted the brains of resulting offspring. Molecules in the sperm called 'small RNA' appeared to influence the offspring's brain development and behaviour.
'Intergenerational inheritance' of similar epigenetic changes from men exposed to extreme trauma has been well documented. This latest research, published in Cell Reports, has raised the question of whether Toxoplasma infections – or even possibly other infections – in men before conception could impact the health of subsequent generations.
The research was led by Walter and Eliza Hall Institute researchers Dr Shiraz Tyebji and Associate Professor Chris Tonkin, in collaboration with Professor Anthony Hannan at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health.
[...] Associate Professor Tonkin said people could carry the dormant Toxoplasma parasite for decades, and that this had been associated with the appearance of symptoms of mental disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
"Toxoplasma infections have been shown to cause long-term epigenetic changes in a range of cells around our body. These are changes that do not alter the genetic sequence of DNA, but influence gene expression – that is, which genes are switched on or off," he said.
[...] "We discovered that Toxoplasma infection alters levels of DNA-like molecules, called small RNA, that are carried by sperm," he said. "These changes in small RNA levels affect gene expression, and so could potentially influence brain development and behaviour of offspring.
"We were stunned to see that even the next generation – the 'grandchildren' of the original infected male – displayed changes in their behaviour," Dr Tyebji said.
Journal Reference:
Shiraz Tyebji, Anthony J. Hannan, Christopher J. Tonkin. Pathogenic Infection in Male Mice Changes Sperm Small RNA Profiles and Transgenerationally Alters Offspring Behavior. Cell Reports, 2020; 31 (4): 107573 DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2020.107573
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(Score: 1, Troll) by legont on Thursday April 30 2020, @07:28PM (8 children)
The idea of *random* mutations being responsible for the progress always looked BS to me. Environment is what triggers changes and then selection cuts bad ones. Lysenko was right https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko [wikipedia.org] and so Stalin.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @07:56PM
everybody loses, no matter who "wins".
Lysenko's theory became the dogma, then the mendelian genetics became the dogma in its place, and then it took 60 years for the mountain of inconvenient facts to grow too high to keep ignoring. The synthesis is happening now instead of 80 years ago. This, children, is the cost of politicking in science.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @08:50PM (1 child)
Nope, Lamarck was right. Environment causes changes directly... the giraffe stretches its neck to reach food, those giraffes that learn to stretch furthest get the most food and then teach their children the best stretching techniques. Two giraffe parents with good stretching technique can offer twice the guidance to their offspring.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday May 01 2020, @05:56PM
Giraffes are born as Llamas and it's only by pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps that they succeed at getting fruit.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Thursday April 30 2020, @10:08PM (2 children)
Changes like say, *random* mutations?
Right after fustakrakich came out [soylentnews.org] about Fascism. What a coincidence.
(Score: 2) by legont on Thursday April 30 2020, @11:25PM (1 child)
It looks to me that environment triggers specific changes and randomness of them is simply a crude approximation of luck of knowledge. And that's me who is probability idea life long fan.
As per fascism, I guess there is a border somewhere between developing a better potato and a better future human. Nevertheless, it's obvious to me that we will have to adapt biologically or die.
Having said that, I don't really care about future generations. Let them care about themselves.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 01 2020, @12:32AM
No intelligent agent, let alone a prescient one, out there to meddle in living things' genomes. No one there to design a "specific change" to answer to any entirely new challenge.
Trying things at random and relying on blind luck and large numbers is the only way a dumb chemical machine can attempt to solve any design problem. A cell does not have the brains and knowledge to infer that low level of glucose is caused by "hooves too weak to dig edible things from under the snow", nor what parameters to tweak to get the "strong enough", nor where in the code to apply the tweaks.
The only non-random things a cell could possibly do, is vary the mutation rate and direct the mutations to safeish areas of code (ones where a random change is not 99% fatal, say). Anything more would require inputs and processing power which just are not there.
(Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Thursday April 30 2020, @11:51PM
Sorry about that. You're wrong, but it's not the simple thing that news stories make it out to be.
In the first place, most serious mutations end up dead well before birth. So you never see them.
The largest number of mutations are "neutral drift", which isn't really quite neutral, but is pretty close. So you can only track those by gene sequencing or some such.
Epigenetic modifications were not part of the "new synthesis" back in the 1950's, but they've been known and accepted for decades. And they were first detected by noticing inter-generational physical changes, so that's not new either.
But do note that epigenetic changes are largely random. Not entirely, as there is sign that, e.g., the tendency to accumulate fat can be fostered by the parents having experienced famine. What this seems to imply is that the tendency towards a particular epigenetic change is also subject to Darwinian evolution. But to a much lesser degree, as epigenetic changes will fade over the generations.
What seems new here is linking the particular parasite (Toxoplasma) to the particular inherited epigenetic change.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday May 01 2020, @12:31AM
The idea of *random* mutations alone driving evolution *is* bullshit. Have you ever actually read the Origin? Or, for that matter, *any* genetics textbook written in the last 40 years?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...