December 28,
2018, Forschungsverbund
Berlin e.V. (FVB)
Adaptations
to environmental change are the most important asset for the persistence of any
plant or animal species. This is usually achieved through genetic mutation and
selection, a slow process driven by chance. Faster and more targeted are so
called epigenetic modifications which do not alter the genetic code but promote
specialisations during cell maturation. A new study carried out by scientists
from the Leibniz-IZW in Germany shows that in wild guinea pigs, epigenetic
modifications specific to individual environmental factors are passed on to the
next generation. The study is published in the scientific journal Genes.
The team of
researchers around Alexandra Weyrich from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife
Research (Leibniz-IZW) in Berlin, Germany, studied two groups of male wild
guinea pigs. One group was fed a protein-reduced diet for two months, the other
group was exposed to an increase in ambient
temperature of ten degrees (Celsius) for the same
period. The animals responded to these changes through epigenetic modifications at
the cellular level. "Epigenetic modifications have been studied for some
time. What we were after was to determine, whether these modifications are
passed on to the next generation of guinea pigs and whether fathers played a
role in this," says Weyrich.
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