Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Fathers’ choices may be packaged and passed down in sperm RNA

quantamagazine.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 196 posts

Re: Fathers’ choices may be packaged and passed down in sperm RNA

#61

Post by eximius »

shevy-java wrote: post #48

"researchers, including those spearheading the work, are cautious about overselling their results" Either it is correct; or it is not. Perhaps it is somewhat correct, but then it may not be fully correct, so it would contain wrong information. I write this here because science does not really work well when it is based on speculation. So this article is weird. It starts by speculating about something rather than anal…

Detecting an effect is present is separate from effect power and mechanism. Showing an effect is present is usually the first step before the other two.

Re: Fathers’ choices may be packaged and passed down in sperm RNA

#63

Post by f1shy »

SoftTalker wrote: post #52
sdf4j wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they all have the same mother, grew up in the same house, etc. I’m pretty sure the first one didn’t have siblings, and the second only had one. Also their mother is not the same person after raising the first kid, or raising two. Parenting never have reproducible conditions.

Agree, those are some environmental differences. But any "microRNA" profile I might have contributed to the conception of each would be broadly similar. My life was pretty stable and levels of stress, diet, exercise, etc. were all about the same for all three.

There are even identical twins that have different behaviors, characters and make different decisions.

Re: Fathers’ choices may be packaged and passed down in sperm RNA

#64

Post by bjrobz »

jjmarr wrote: post #24

> For instance, mouse fathers exposed to nicotine(opens a new tab) sire male pups with livers that are good at disarming not just nicotine but cocaine and other toxins as well. queue rationalist fathers microdosing nicotine patches before conception to give their kids the best chance at abusing drugs.

ok now is my chance.

what is this (opens new tab) phenomenon?!

Re: Fathers’ choices may be packaged and passed down in sperm RNA

#65

Post by jvm___ »

bjrobz wrote: post #64
jjmarr wrote: post #24

> For instance, mouse fathers exposed to nicotine(opens a new tab) sire male pups with livers that are good at disarming not just nicotine but cocaine and other toxins as well. queue rationalist fathers microdosing nicotine patches before conception to give their kids the best chance at abusing drugs.

ok now is my chance. what is this (opens new tab) phenomenon?!

"microdose cocaine"

Re: Fathers’ choices may be packaged and passed down in sperm RNA

#66

Post by saghm »

bjrobz wrote: post #64
jjmarr wrote: post #24

> For instance, mouse fathers exposed to nicotine(opens a new tab) sire male pups with livers that are good at disarming not just nicotine but cocaine and other toxins as well. queue rationalist fathers microdosing nicotine patches before conception to give their kids the best chance at abusing drugs.

ok now is my chance. what is this (opens new tab) phenomenon?!

In the article, there's a link in the text right before they put that parenthetical. I'm guessing they're saying that the link interested them so they clicked it to read but opened it in a new tab so they could finish the current article first.

Re: Fathers’ choices may be packaged and passed down in sperm RNA

#68

Post by jibal »

> “This study shows that paternal exercise can confer benefits — enhanced endurance and metabolic health — to offspring,”

So good habits can be good for offspring.

> For instance, mouse fathers exposed to nicotine(opens a new tab) sire male pups with livers that are good at disarming not just nicotine but cocaine and other toxins as well.

So bad habits can be good for offspring.

> “We just don’t have really any understanding of how RNAs can do this, and that’s the hand-wavy part,”

It seems to me to all be the handwavy part. I'm happy to wait until the research is considerably further advanced, past the clickbait stage.

Re: Fathers’ choices may be packaged and passed down in sperm RNA

#69

Post by jibal »

technick wrote: post #67

I guess this makes sense if you also consider the history of dog breeding. The best traits are always breed forward into future generations, those characteristics could be how athletic the dog is or how friendly the dog is.

You're talking about traits passed via DNA, which is nothing new ... this is quite different.

Re: Fathers’ choices may be packaged and passed down in sperm RNA

#70

Post by jibal »

websiteapi wrote: post #9

assuming this is true, perhaps it's best to freeze sperm regularly with labels that way if you go off the deep end you can snapshot quite literally your best self? some possible times - right before college, right after college, after you meet someone you think you'd marry (but before you do), after marriage. seems like a neat premise for a sci fi novella.

> if you go off the deep end you can snapshot quite literally your best self

Or your worst, since the article also suggests that bad habits can be epigenetically useful to the offspring.

I would hold off reaching any conclusions from this clickbait.

Post reply on HN