Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance: the story of learned avoidance
1–10 of 101 posts
Re: Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance: the story of learned avoidance
#2If it's inheritable wouldn't that make it by definition genetic?
Re: Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance: the story of learned avoidance
#3> While the Murphy group consistently observed this attraction in their assays, the Hunter group generally did not (Kaletsky et al., 2025). The Vidal-Gadea group also observed that worms that had not been exposed to PA14 were initially attracted to it, suggesting that this is an important piece of the puzzle (Akinosho et al., 2025). Indeed, when tested directly, the Murphy group did not observe attraction using the temperature-shift method (Kaletsky et al., 2025). However, whether the omission of azide alone explains the discrepancy between the studies is not clear. In a handful of assays, the Hunter group used azide but failed to see the initial attraction to PA14, or to observe learned avoidance in the F2 generation.
Every time I look into epigenetic inheritance studies I run into a lot of finicky experiments like this, where the outcomes appear to be highly dependent on several variables that aren’t fully understood.
One group of researchers claims to have pinned down the results, but as someone outside of this world trying to interpret the studies it’s hard to know how well they’ve really controlled these finicky experiments to isolate the single effect (epigenetic inheritance) that they claim explains everything.
Re: Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance: the story of learned avoidance
#4If it's inheritable wouldn't that make it by definition genetic?
No. If the change happens without altering the DNA (or RNA) sequence it's not genetic it's epigenetic.
epi- = outside
Re: Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance: the story of learned avoidance
#5If it's inheritable wouldn't that make it by definition genetic?
Genetic would mean that genes get modified.
But there might be other ways that some traits get inherited, eg by changing the cellular environment in the sperm/egg itself which could affect the offspring while keeping the genes the same.
Re: Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance: the story of learned avoidance
#6If it's inheritable wouldn't that make it by definition genetic?
Epigenetic inheritance is a mechanism whereby traits could be passed from one generation to the next without modifying the underlying genetic DNA. The mechanism would alter the expression of different parts of DNA.
It’s a very young field with a lot of open questions. The concept has been adopted and abused in the mainstream so you have to be careful to separate the science from the pseudoscience.
Re: Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance: the story of learned avoidance
#7If it's inheritable wouldn't that make it by definition genetic?
Could you restate this? I believe "genetic" usually refers to only the sequence of linear bases, while epigenetics refers to histone acetylation, and base methylation (And other things perhaps). These are also heritable, and regulate protein expression in a way that, like genetics, affects phenotype.
Re: Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance: the story of learned avoidance
#8So Lamarck wasn't entirely incorrect either. Darwin would have been fascinated by these results.
Re: Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance: the story of learned avoidance
#9If it's inheritable wouldn't that make it by definition genetic?
Genetic would mean that genes get modified. But there might be other ways that some traits get inherited, eg by changing the cellular environment in the sperm/egg itself which could affect the offspring while keeping the genes the same.
Maybe he's trying to go to the earliest idea of "gen-es" aka the reasons for the traits of an individual. The idea existed before the discovery of cells kernels and DNA right ? so in a way, if there are other mechanisms involved in passing traits to children, it could be termed as gen-something
Re: Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance: the story of learned avoidance
#10> While the Murphy group consistently observed this attraction in their assays, the Hunter group generally did not (Kaletsky et al., 2025). The Vidal-Gadea group also observed that worms that had not been exposed to PA14 were initially attracted to it, suggesting that this is an important piece of the puzzle (Akinosho et al., 2025). Indeed, when tested directly, the Murphy group did not observe attraction using the t…
It can be simplified to this question:
- Do C. elegans offspring show a modified behaviour unrelated to a changed genome sequence?
That is a fairly simple question. The answer to it should be simple too.
You always have to distill complicated papers that babble about things to a minimum statement.