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

quantamagazine.org

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

#191

Post by pegasus »

jibal wrote: post #184
shwaj wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the “paternal exercise” case the trait isn’t the habit of exercising, it’s the metabolic changes of exercise that are (apparently) conferred to both father and offspring.

You're completely missing the point that I explicitly stated. The trait that is purportedly being transmitted is metabolic changes that confer some advantage, but that's not what's being measured in the father, "exercise" is--not a word was said about fathers having better metabolic health, just that they "exercise". Which is reason to be skeptical of the claim.

Have you considered that checking for that specifically might not be actually needed? After all, the correlation between exercise and metabolic health is well established.

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

#192

Post by sigmoid10 »

jibal wrote: post #186
sigmoid10 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>that's from the reporter, but I don't have faith that "transmit traits" is at all accurate It is pretty accurate, even if we don't understand all details yet. Here's a review article of the current research that's not from a popsci journalist: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-37820-2

That does not in the least address my concern. Again, "it certainly isn't true in the way that genes express traits".

You may be confused by the terminology, but that is literally what the word "phenotype" in the linked article means. Just in science-lingo.

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

#193

Post by cwmoore »

pcl wrote: post #111
sigmoid10 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> ”They will not persist across many generations though” Why not? Is there some tempering mechanism on epigenetic transfer? I could imagine that some sperm-conferred epigenetic markers could continue down the male descendants unbroken.

If I understand both correctly, a better answer to your question than sibling post is that yes, that could be imagined, but your dichotomy is not mutually exclusive, and the process described here is much more related to variable conditions of the environment and the parents’ health at the time of conception rather than to the replicable genetic structures.

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

#194

Post by cwmoore »

whimsicalism wrote: post #130
hshdhdhj4444 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also “mouse models”. The only purpose mouse models serve is to fill the popular press with sensational findings and torture a lot of mice.

the only purpose of hacker news comments is to aggravate readers with overly reductive takes

Thanks, both of you, now please stop it.

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

#195

Post by shwaj »

pegasus wrote: post #191
jibal wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're completely missing the point that I explicitly stated. The trait that is purportedly being transmitted is metabolic changes that confer some advantage, but that's not what's being measured in the father, "exercise" is--not a word was said about fathers having better metabolic health, just that they "exercise". Which is reason to be skeptical of the claim.

Have you considered that checking for that specifically might not be actually needed? After all, the correlation between exercise and metabolic health is well established.

That was my original thought, however if you want to quantify an effect it would be ideal to measure the same trait in both parent and offspring. I assume that the reason that this was done (I didn’t read the papers) is because this is a retrospective study, where the participants self-report on the exercise level of their fathers, rather than a longitudinal study which could measure the fathers’ metabolic state fitness at time of conception.

Thus, although there is a plausible link, I now agree with the parent post that this is sufficient reason to take the study with a grain of salt (given well known academic incentives to produce positive results, etc).

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

#196

Post by saghm »

roywiggins wrote: post #81
saghm wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It seems to be hidden text in the page? Either way, it just shows up alongside links when you copy text from the article.

Oh interesting! That didn't even occur to me.
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