The heritage of parental traumatic exposure through the use of molecular specificity

Summary 

The study examined the heritage of parental traumatic exposure through the use of molecular specificity. The phenomenon has existed for long but many people still never understood it for the longest time. The study subjected F0 mice to odor feared habituation before conception and established that the successive conceived F1, as well as F2 generations, demonstrated an enhanced behavioral sensitivity related F0 conditioned scent save for other scents ( Dias & Ressler, 2014). The study established that when acetophenone, the odor that stimulates a recognized odorant receptor (Olfr151), is used in conditioning F0 mice, the behavioral responsiveness of the F1, as well as F2 generations about acetophenone, achieved completion by an increased neuroanatomical representation belonging to the Olfr151 trail. Bisulfite sequencing of sperm DNA extracted from conditioned males and F1 naïve progeny showed that CpG hypomethylation was present in the Olfr151 gene. Importantly, in vitro fertilization, F2 heritage, as well as cross-fostering created the transgenerational effect passed down through parental gametes. 

It is noteworthy to indicate that the study findings provided a framework that serves to address how environmental information pass down transgenerationally at the neuroanatomical, behavioral, and epigenetic level. The results of the research have provided extensive knowledge on how environmental information stored in the parental gametes pass down the next generation and causes a change in behavior in the subsequent progeny ( Dias & Ressler, 2014). Parental gametes carry DNA information that passes to the progeny during fertilization, which reflects in the behavior of children in the F1 and F2 generation. The environment has a lot of effects on any living organism with regards to the inherited behaviors. The progeny will also pass down the same behaviors to their children through the same means of fertilization even though the responsiveness reduces with each subsequent generation. It is worth noting that the inheritance of behaviors has got nothing to do with the species in question but everything with the environment. Some behaviors are reinforced when the length of conditioning is extended. Prolonged conditioning makes the response stronger and the behavior more outstanding. Overall, the study established that fertilization helps in the inheritance of behavior, epigenetic, and neuroanatomical levels. 

Questions/Extrapolations 

1. Parental gametes provide a conduit through which transgenerational effects pass from parents to the offspring. The effect embeds in the DNA of the parental organism and passes to the offspring during fertilization. The coded DNA information in the parental gamete replicates during fertilization, which explains the present progeny similarities in the DNA structure between parents and the next generation in any species ( Sadler-Rigglema & Skinner, 2015). 

2. If the transgenerational effects pass from parents to the offspring during fertilization as demonstrated by the study, then why is it that controlled fertilization has not yet succeeded in establishing pure breeds that have the desired behavior? Importantly, the world knows so much concerning behavioral inheritance as opposed to epigenetic and neuroanatomical levels, what can researchers do to enhance the use of the latter two? 

3. The F0 mice were conditioned before conception, but the F1 and F2 generations demonstrated responsiveness to the odor. The idea is that the information remains coded in the genetic information and only pass to the gametes during fertilization. In the absence of fertilization, then information stored in the DNA remains a preserve of the parental organism ( Sadler-Rigglema & Skinner, 2015). It is essential to indicate that, the DNA acts a storage device for the parental information. Controlled fertilization can help individuals transmit the desired behavior while restraining the undesired behavior from the parents. 

References 

Dias, B. G., & Ressler, K. J. (2014). Parental olfactory experience influences behavior and neural structure in subsequent generations.  Nature neuroscience ,  17 (1), 89. 

Sadler-Riggleman, I., & Skinner, M. K. (2015). Environment and the Epigenetic Transgenerational Inheritance of.  Epigenetics , 297.