Nongenetic inheritance and transgenerational epigenetics
- PMID: 25601643
- DOI: 10.1016/j.molmed.2014.12.004
Nongenetic inheritance and transgenerational epigenetics
Abstract
The idea that inherited genotypes define phenotypes has been paramount in modern biology. The question remains, however, whether stable phenotypes could be also inherited from parents independently of the genetic sequence per se. Recent data suggest that parental experiences can be transmitted behaviorally, through in utero exposure of the developing fetus to the maternal environment, or through either the male or female germline. The challenge is to delineate a plausible mechanism. In the past decade it has been proposed that epigenetic mechanisms are involved in multigenerational transmission of phenotypes and transgenerational inheritance. The prospect that ancestral experiences are written in our epigenome has immense implications for our understanding of human behavior, health, and disease.
Keywords: DNA methylation; epigenetics; germline transmission; histone modification; noncoding RNA; transgenerational.
Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Comment in
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Transgenerational epigenetic inheritance requires a much deeper analysis.Trends Mol Med. 2015 May;21(5):269-70. doi: 10.1016/j.molmed.2015.02.010. Epub 2015 Mar 17. Trends Mol Med. 2015. PMID: 25795540
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