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

quantamagazine.org

101–110 of 196 posts

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

#101
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding "jk" after a casual prejudiced insult to a demographic doesn't undo the prejudiced insult.

I'm insulting myself. I'm describing what is my family dynamic.

Insulting yourself might have been your intent, but what you wrote is just a general ageist insult. It's like you when you fail something, and you make a racist analogy. You might want to insult yourself, you might think you are insulting yourself, but you are just racist.

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

#102
post #97
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theres huge uncertainty and layered assumptions in all of microbiology and biochemistry about how exactly things work on small scale. Because it is really hard to study live reactions in little things you can just barely see on an electron microscope. But yet humanity has managed to assert statistical truths about for example genetics and explain countless diseases, even cure and alleviate some. So even if you don’t…

I'm well aware of that. The point is that people are drawing all sorts of unwarranted conclusions from this lay report on early stage research.

> The point is that people are drawing all sorts of unwarranted conclusions from this lay report on early stage research.

That is partly because no one seems willing to summarize this work, in concise form, for nonspecialists. Such a summary might be, "This is an important finding, but it doesn't mean Lysenko was right, and the term 'inheritance' doesn't have just one meaning."

I think the term "inheritance" for both DNA and epigenetic information transfers (as in the linked article) is innately confusing.

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

#103

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.

Without the sci-fi, if you take people with 10 to 12 kids, you have great accidental, natural, objective experiments here.

You can study those kids and compare them to the reported lifestyle of the parents at the time before their conception.

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

#104
post #68

> “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 under…

I agree. The example with Nicotine intake having a somewhat positive effect on the children feels too wild at the money. Think of all the kids of the 60th and 70th. They must be immune to most toxins ;). Yes I take this example to the extreme. I also feel that this could maybe contradict what we learned from evolution theory. Why would it take so long for a given treat to establish itself. Maybe I mix too much into one bag after reading this one article.

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

#105
post #68

> “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 under…

I agree. The example with Nicotine intake having a somewhat positive effect on the children feels too wild at the money. Think of all the kids of the 60th and 70th. They must be immune to most toxins ;). Yes I take this example to the extreme. I also feel that this could maybe contradict what we learned from evolution theory. Why would it take so long for a given treat to establish itself. Maybe I mix too much into o…

If true, I suppose there is also a opportunity cost involved. Meaning selecting for better coping with nicotine, does not help selecting for smarter offspring and maybe even preventing that. So it might be somewhat positive but at a cost unknown.

Also there are the very known costs of nicotine damaging sperms, or of course being in literal smoke as a child (or adult) and deal with those real effects.

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

#106
I have two children:

Prior to them, I didnt think that behaviour or traits are inheritable.

When one of them was aronud 3 or 3.5, I observed an interesting behaviour: It was about the meal, which contained fries - and ketchup. He saw that the ketchup was flowing slowly towards the fries and reached there finally - he became funnily hectict, trying to prevent even more ketchup touching the fries.

Today I think he behaved that way ... because ... on my plate which fries & ketchup ... if this happens ... then ... you know :-D :-D :-D :-D It drives me nuts, really - if I am at a restaurant, I ask always for separte plates for things which are fried, because I love the crust and it gets destroyed if any type of gravy is scattered around the plate :-D

Or maybe my son just found out the same, and then there is no inheritance. Im fine with this as well. :-D

But what I can clearly see, is: In their body shape I can see that their mother and I were super-fit-in-shape when they were "created".

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

#107
post #68

> “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 under…

I agree. The example with Nicotine intake having a somewhat positive effect on the children feels too wild at the money. Think of all the kids of the 60th and 70th. They must be immune to most toxins ;). Yes I take this example to the extreme. I also feel that this could maybe contradict what we learned from evolution theory. Why would it take so long for a given treat to establish itself. Maybe I mix too much into o…

>I also feel that this could maybe contradict what we learned from evolution theory.

It doesn't, but the article doesn't go into this detail, so people unfamiliar with the field wouldn't understand why. The keyword is epigenetics. I.e. how certain genes become activated or deactivated through behaviour and/or environmental influences. But the DNA sequence itself remains unaltered. So no evolution necessary. There are basically a bunch of molecules than sit on top of your DNA that regulate gene expression. They don't just tell a cell to behave like a skin cell or a brain cell, they also regulate the entire cellular metabolism. The discovery that male sperm can also transmit this epigenetic information to offspring is relatively new, but now that we know that, it makes total sense that these gene-expression-modifying behaviours in fathers could affect their children. After all, they simply get to start with a good (or bad) bunch of epigenetic markers. They will not persist across many generations though, so it has no real long term effect on evolution. It may even be an evolved mechanism that allows organisms to respond to environmental changes on timeframes that would be prohibited by evolution.

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

#108

I have two children: Prior to them, I didnt think that behaviour or traits are inheritable. When one of them was aronud 3 or 3.5, I observed an interesting behaviour: It was about the meal, which contained fries - and ketchup. He saw that the ketchup was flowing slowly towards the fries and reached there finally - he became funnily hectict, trying to prevent even more ketchup touching the fries. Today I think he beha…

Nurture.

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

#109

I have two children: Prior to them, I didnt think that behaviour or traits are inheritable. When one of them was aronud 3 or 3.5, I observed an interesting behaviour: It was about the meal, which contained fries - and ketchup. He saw that the ketchup was flowing slowly towards the fries and reached there finally - he became funnily hectict, trying to prevent even more ketchup touching the fries. Today I think he beha…

Nurture.

Note sure if I understand what you mean?

You mean that we showed them already by that age to not mix fries & ketchup? :-D If children are that small and you are sitting with two of them at the table, handing over those ideas to them in a "nurturing way" is the last thing on what you can focus on with two small kids at the table :-))

And its always great if someone gives a downvote here if you share some personal life stories :-D

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

#110
post #68

> “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 under…

I agree. The example with Nicotine intake having a somewhat positive effect on the children feels too wild at the money. Think of all the kids of the 60th and 70th. They must be immune to most toxins ;). Yes I take this example to the extreme. I also feel that this could maybe contradict what we learned from evolution theory. Why would it take so long for a given treat to establish itself. Maybe I mix too much into o…

Speaking mostly from personal experience here, if a kid gets a suped-up liver from their dad's smoking habits, cool. But how many kids fathers stopped smoking when the kid was born? My point, the father's smoking habits may have passed down a strong liver but his continued use damaged the child's lungs and possibly more.

These mechanisms of epigenetic inheritance or whatever need much more study. It is far too early to draw any conclusions other than we need to keep researching.

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