You are what your grandmother ate
13 November 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Roxanne Khamsi
A mother’s diet can change the behaviour of a specific gene for at least two subsequent generations, a new study demonstrates for the first time.
Feeding mice an enriched diet during pregnancy silenced a gene for light fur in their pups. And even though these pups ate a standard, un-enriched diet, the gene remained less active in their subsequent offspring.
The findings could help explain the curious results from recent studies of human populations – including one showing that the grandchildren of well-fed Swedes had a greater risk of diabetes.
The new mouse experiment lends support to the idea that we inherit not only our genes from our parents, but also a set of instructions that tell the genes when to become active. These instructions appear to be passed on through “epigenetic” changes to DNA – genes can be activated or silenced according to the chemical groups that are added onto them.Find out more:
Link to full text:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10518?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=dn10518
