You Are What Your Father Ate, Too

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101223130149.htm

ScienceDaily (Dec. 24, 2010) — We aren't just what we eat; we are what our parents ate too. That's an emerging idea that is bolstered by a new study showing that mice sired by fathers fed on a low-protein diet show distinct and reproducible changes in the activity of key metabolic genes in their livers. Those changes occurred despite the fact that the fathers never saw their offspring and spent minimal time with their mothers, the researchers say, suggesting that the nutritional information is passed on to the next generation via the sperm not through some sort of social influence.

The new findings reported in the Dec. 23 issue of Cell, a Cell Press publication, add to evidence that epigenetic reprogramming of genes may be an important mechanism for passing information about the environment, and in this case the nutritional environment, from one generation to the next. Epigenetics refers to heritable chemical modifications to DNA that can alter the way genes are expressed without changing the underlying sequence of their As, Gs, Ts and Cs.

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