Wednesday 2 January 2019

New epigenetic study: Guinea pig fathers pass on adaptive responses to environmental changes


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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