EpiGaia Blog

Scientific research confirming and clarifying the importance of epigenetics in biology - specifically, the passing on of traits to offspring - just keeps coming. A recent study published in The Quarterly Review of Biology (University of Chicago) highlighted over 100 examples of specific animal traits passed to offspring via non-DNA inheritance.

A Current.com post includes selected examples from the study, as well as commentary on the conclusions. Here are a few examples:

Fruit flies exposed to certain chemicals transmit changes—bristly outgrowths on their eyes—down at least 13 generations.

Exposing a pregnant rat to a chemical that alters reproductive hormones leads to generations of sick offspring.

People malnourished in adolescence transmit higher rates of heart disease and diabetes to their children and grandchildren.

In these and 97 other cases the changes in subsequent generations were not from changes in DNA but from epigenetics.

According to the Current.com post, the biggest implication of this new research is that “All the stuff we’re synthesizing and creating from plastics to nanomaterials is going to live in our bodies and take its toll down the generations for a long, long time.”

The “glass-half-full’ flipside to this opinion is epigenetic nutrition: we can identify nutrients and specific foods, used by our ancestors, that meet the needs of our present-day bodies.

Tags: ancestry DNA, epigaia, epigenetic nutrition, epigenetics, epigenome, genetic genealogy