Persistence of epigenetic changes “fascinating and confusing”

At The Scientist:

Epigenetic changes alter the way genes are expressed throughout an organism’s life. These tweaks are then wiped from the genomes of reproductive cells, giving offspring a clean start—or so it seemed. Now, new evidence has emerged that epigenetic changes can be transmitted across multiple generations, despite the wipe. In a study published February 7 in Cell, a group of scientists tracked an engineered epigenetic mutation across four generations of lab-bred mice, finding evidence of the alteration in each of the subsequent generations. These alterations seemingly resurfaced even after the epigenetic wipe. The authors claim it is the first experimental evidence for transgenerational epigenetic inheritance using methylation-edited mice.

“It’s kind of a dream experiment,” says Patrick Allard, an environmental epigeneticist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in the research. “And the results are both fascinating and confusing.” – Katherine Irving, Feb 17, 2023

We thought this was an old story, actually. But epigenetics keeps being rediscovered, probably because it raises a problem for evolution theory: How do we know changes are due to Darwinian natural selection, as opposed to epigenetics.

The paper requires a fee or subscription.

You may also wish to read: Epigenetic change: Lamarck, wake up, you’re wanted in the conference room!

Copyright © 2023 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana