Sperm memory
Scientists have determined how, in addition to DNA, the father transmits information to offspring
Svetlana Maslova, Hi-tech+
The discovery is important to prevent the transmission of many diseases from the father to children, which a child can currently get through stress, nutrition, lifestyle and bad habits of the father.
Scientists have long found out that the DNA of parents is a key factor determining the health and illness of a child, but inheritance through DNA is not the only way to transmit information. It is known from previous studies that a father's lifestyle, diet, weight, stress level and bad habits affect the health of his children and even grandchildren. The transmission of this information is determined by epigenetic inheritance during fertilization, but the exact mechanisms of this process were unknown.
Now Canadian scientists from McGill University has made an important discovery in this area, after 15 years of hard work.
Article by Lismer et al. Histone H3 lysine 4 trimethylation in sperm is transmitted to the embryo and associated with diet-induced phenotypes in the offspring published in the journal Developmental Cell – VM.
They were able to determine that information from the father is transmitted through spermatozoa not only by DNA molecules, but also through proteins.
"The big breakthrough of this study is that it has identified non–DNA-related means by which spermatozoa remember factors (for example, diet) from the father and transmit information to the embryo," explained the author of the work Sarah Kimmins in a press release How sperm remember. In other words, it changes the paradigm in understanding heredity, which is now based not only on DNA, but also on sperm proteins.
The findings are based on experiments with diet in mice. A special diet of males with folic acid deficiency led to epigenetic changes in embryos. Thus, scientists have discovered changes in methyl groups associated with histone proteins, which play a crucial role in the packaging of DNA strands. The disorders were transmitted during fertilization and persisted in the developing embryo.
As a result, these changes in embryos led to congenital defects of the spine and skull.
Now scientists intend to find out whether it is possible to correct pathologies in histones in order to exclude bad heredity in offspring. "Thanks to the new understanding that information is inherited not only through DNA, promising potential opportunities for disease prevention appear at the earliest stage," Kimmins concluded.
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