Evidence is growing that sperm carries marks of a father’s life experiences, influencing traits in offspring.
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Do you take after your dad’s RNA?
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This is the sort of health and science I love reading about. Great article, more of this.
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I don't think justice system would care that much even if Global Determinism was proven, denying free will and making us all machines.
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How those RNA fragment sounds like virus, what is the actual difference ?
So basically DNA crossover/recombination isn't that random after all
So basically DNA crossover/recombination isn't that random after all
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Geez louise. If my remark needs explaining, then you have little sensibility or little sense of humor. Possibly both. Could this article not have waited until Father’s Day? It’s not like anyone’s career depends on when this appears in Ars.
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Generational Traumas are being studied for a while now:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngBemRkP2bw
(TV-documentary for German-speakers)
I am happy there's also a positive side to this.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngBemRkP2bw
(TV-documentary for German-speakers)
I am happy there's also a positive side to this.
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Frosty Grin
Ars Legatus Legionis
Can be nothing, because there isn't necessarily a "purpose".
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Germline gene editing of humans is illegal; but what is the law around something like this?
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I'm sure you agree already, but for anyone that needs it, I just wanted to say that this finding does not support open-ended Lamarckian evolution. It just shows another mechanism for limited pseudo-Lamarckian effects. Some of the other known mechanisms include DNA methylation, for example.
These effects are limited and cannot lead to unlimited change, so Lamarck and his disciple Lysenko were still wrong, as far as I know. Happy to be corrected, IANAB.
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But oh, beamish nephew, beware of the day
If your Mendel be Lamarck, for then
You will softly and suddenly lose DNA
And inherit acquired characteristics from men. (Sorry about scansion failure).
Apologies to the Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, MA, Student of Christ Church College Oxford, pioneer photographer and researcher into continuous functions.
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I will get some flak for this, but it is true, it happened. I worked with Chinese researchers in the past. Their results always confirmed the hypotheses of the department heads. Once extreme case: the Chinese colleague used the wrong strain of transgenic mice, by mistake and the results still were the expected ones, even if using that strain made no sense.
I am sure that Lysenko's experiments also confirmed what was expected.
I am sure that Lysenko's experiments also confirmed what was expected.
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1. Mother's Day isn't universally celebrated on the same day.
2. Some mothers are biologists/biochemists, and might well enjoy reading this
3. Nothing in the article prevents a person from celebrating their mother
Tl;dr: you're right that it doesn't matter when something is published, but that argument works both ways.
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Great... more guilt I can't do anything about now. Lol
Honestly, if I had known how much epigenetic impact my bad habits / psychological trauma might have on my (then) unborn children, I don't know if I would have agreed to pursue parenthood at all.
Honestly, if I had known how much epigenetic impact my bad habits / psychological trauma might have on my (then) unborn children, I don't know if I would have agreed to pursue parenthood at all.
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Gee, thanks dad?
I thought the largest cohort study on epigenetics was one that looked at children of Europeans who survived the worst of WW2 including years of malnutrition and starvation. Kids who were born during times of famine had a higher rate of cardiac, cognitive and obesity issues later on in life. It's as if their parents' experience somehow affected the growing fetus and those children's bodies behaved as if they were starving, even after growing up during more plentiful times later on.
I thought the largest cohort study on epigenetics was one that looked at children of Europeans who survived the worst of WW2 including years of malnutrition and starvation. Kids who were born during times of famine had a higher rate of cardiac, cognitive and obesity issues later on in life. It's as if their parents' experience somehow affected the growing fetus and those children's bodies behaved as if they were starving, even after growing up during more plentiful times later on.
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I'm guessing that comment was in reference to Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and if derfense lawyers can blame it on the father (or at least muddy the water) they absolutely will.
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I feel you. I often share interesting stories with my wife at the end of the day. But when (a) she underwent trauma as a child, (b) we have 4 kids together, (c) our kids show a vulnerability to anxiety and emotional dysregulation and (d) we’re helping the kids through stages of acting out due to a combination of normal preteen stuff and point c… it seems like this science may trigger guilt even though not of it is her fault.
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Given how many times Lamarck has been disproven, I remain skeptical. Remember: evolution by means of natural selection requires reproducible heritability. Giraffes do not have long necks because their ancestors kept stretching upwards, but because their individual neck bones are so much larger than other vertebrates, a hereditary trait. The ancestors of modern giraffes looked more like Okapis, but those with longer neckbones had an easier time finding food in some types of forests.
More importantly, one major problem with these small RNAs, with epigenetics, and with lamarckism more broadly, is that the slow process of exaptation results in complex biological processes that all have to work together successfully, like a giraffe's unique cardiovascular system that prevents syncope every time they drink.
Epigenetics offers a bunch of nice just-so stories that tend to fall apart once you look closer.
More importantly, one major problem with these small RNAs, with epigenetics, and with lamarckism more broadly, is that the slow process of exaptation results in complex biological processes that all have to work together successfully, like a giraffe's unique cardiovascular system that prevents syncope every time they drink.
Epigenetics offers a bunch of nice just-so stories that tend to fall apart once you look closer.
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The article really downplayed a lot of this. Also, how is that RNA getting to the nucleus of the egg? How does it get incorporated into the nuclear DNA? If it's just mRNA (doubtful), that gives you maybe a few copies of a protein before/during syngamy, while it's still a single cell?
And then of course these epigenetic effects manifest in ways that have so far been indistinguishable from natural selection?
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My understanding is that with at least one of those studies, on children born during the seige of Leningrad (St Petersburg), they found that the most likely cause was kidney development in utero, along with known effects of malnutrition on neurological development.
There's a tendency to reach for "obvious" explanations that "just make sense", and I really feel like people are running with this in all sorts of directions that are likely to be unwarranted.
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So, if you were preparing with your partner to conceive, the father would want to start (or continue) exercising, reduce stress and anxiety, and stop drinking alcohol for some period of time? I do wonder how long before conception this behavior must be dominant to cause the effect and how long do negative factors leave RNA? Considering how much time, effort, and money parents invest in their offspring, there may be decent returns from investing early in the child's genetic wellbeing. At least these aspects can be affected vs DNA contributed traits.
I imagine more studies will look into this, but I fear they will be swamped by pseudoscience and wellness peddlers trying to profit from potential parents.
I imagine more studies will look into this, but I fear they will be swamped by pseudoscience and wellness peddlers trying to profit from potential parents.
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RNA isn't self-replicating. It's produced by expression of genes in the DNA. At most, you can get epigenetic effects which make particular genes more or less likely to be expressed. It modifies frequency/concentration, it doesn't introduce new things.
In a virus, you have sequences of RNA or DNA (depending on the virus) which are not part of the cell's DNA, which the virus causes to be replicated by hijacking cellular functionality.
Also, in the viral case, part of what is expressed in the RNA/DNA are the proteins to create mechanisms to release those products from the cell, transport them to other cells in the same and other organisms, and enter those new cells to repeat the process. None of those things are present here.
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Sperm cells necessarily deliver content to the nucleus of the egg, that's the whole point.
Does this RNA get incorporated into the DNA? There's no retrotranscription here, at most it's epigenetic effects that affect rate of transcription. But that can be significant.
Those aren't even in comparable categories. Epigenetics increases or decreases transcription rate. Natural selection is the process of whole organisms living or dying based on their suitability to the environment. For epigenetics to be at all relevant, it would have to make a difference for natural selection; otherwise, you are saying it's doing nothing at all. That in no way invalidates the selective importance of other mechanisms, like genes. Anything that affects gene expression in any way is potentially going to result in differential selection.
If you mean indistinguishable from inheritance, this is suggesting that something about gene expression is reflected in the next generation, but to be indistinguishable from inheritance it would have to be carried forward much more than one generation. Functionally, it makes sense that a new-born organism would have its development and gene expression tuned to its parent's environment, but what gets passed to the third generation should depend more on what happens to the second generation than to the first. So it ought to be forgetting this influence as the organism develops and new environmental influences occur.
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I'm not sure birth is the demarcation line. I think my kids are ok, I had a sudden interest in exercise right at the point of conception.
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It really is time we acknowledge that, clever as he was, sometimes Aristotle was a dumb fuck. By inventing or propagating teleology he encouraged the trend towards eschatological ideas in the Church and led to the whole End Times nonsense which is currently putting the Doomsday Clock so close to midnight.
The Jains believe that the world has no purpose and cycles eternally, which puts them way ahead of the Abrahamic religions scientifically.
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Having seen Shoah survivors encourage their children and grandchildren to "eat, you never know when you will need to be fat" - in London - I can think of other explanations.
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I’ve been trying to find a link to a study I read about a few years ago that was reported as finding a disproportionate level of obesity in the children of parents who had experienced extreme food scarcity in their own youths. Their bodies were more likely to store fat than a control group’s.
I’m not sure if anyone ever replicated the findings but it was pretty interesting.
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I swear it's not my fault! Blame it on my dad's epididymis!
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This! It is because of Ars commenters more than a decade ago that I shed my climate change skepticism (they countered my "sources" with genuine factual sources and did so in a remarkably non-condescending way) and ultimately went on to abandon conservativism and to embrace critical thinking.
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Scary Devil Monastery
Ars Scholae Palatinae
The answer is likely to be supplied by olympic coaches who know, to the month or even week, how long it takes to turn a potential into an athlete. I mean, we already have a good starting point in the knowledge behind professional athletes and their training regimes.
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Scary Devil Monastery
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Congratulations on leaving the cult.
Only 99 million, 999 thousand and 999 to go before the US is fixed.
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I have been saying for years that the Y chromosome evolves including LIFE EXPERIENCE.
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Studying individual cells and single molecules is very difficult, the technology for doing that have only become available in the last few years.
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