You are what your grandmother ate

More evidence that nutrition directly affects gene expression and the effect can be passed on to future generations.

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.

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http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10518?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=dn10518