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The third barrier to transgenerational inheritance in animals: somatic epigenetic resetting
After early controversy, it is now increasingly clear that acquired responses to environmental factors may perpetuate across multiple generations—a phenomenon termed transgenerational epigenetic inheritance (TEI). Experiments with Caenorhabditis elegans, which exhibits robust heritable epigenetic ef...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
John Wiley and Sons Inc.
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10074133/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36862326 http://dx.doi.org/10.15252/embr.202256615 |
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author | Ewe, Chee Kiang Rechavi, Oded |
author_facet | Ewe, Chee Kiang Rechavi, Oded |
author_sort | Ewe, Chee Kiang |
collection | PubMed |
description | After early controversy, it is now increasingly clear that acquired responses to environmental factors may perpetuate across multiple generations—a phenomenon termed transgenerational epigenetic inheritance (TEI). Experiments with Caenorhabditis elegans, which exhibits robust heritable epigenetic effects, demonstrated small RNAs as key factors of TEI. Here, we discuss three major barriers to TEI in animals, two of which, the “Weismann barrier” and germline epigenetic reprogramming, have been known for decades. These are thought to effectively prevent TEI in mammals but not to the same extent in C. elegans. We argue that a third barrier—that we termed “somatic epigenetic resetting”—may further inhibit TEI and, unlike the other two, restricts TEI in C. elegans as well. While epigenetic information can overcome the Weismann barrier and transmit from the soma to the germline, it usually cannot “travel back” directly from the germline to the soma in subsequent generations. Nevertheless, heritable germline memory may still influence the animal's physiology by indirectly modifying gene expression in somatic tissues. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10074133 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | John Wiley and Sons Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-100741332023-04-06 The third barrier to transgenerational inheritance in animals: somatic epigenetic resetting Ewe, Chee Kiang Rechavi, Oded EMBO Rep Commentary After early controversy, it is now increasingly clear that acquired responses to environmental factors may perpetuate across multiple generations—a phenomenon termed transgenerational epigenetic inheritance (TEI). Experiments with Caenorhabditis elegans, which exhibits robust heritable epigenetic effects, demonstrated small RNAs as key factors of TEI. Here, we discuss three major barriers to TEI in animals, two of which, the “Weismann barrier” and germline epigenetic reprogramming, have been known for decades. These are thought to effectively prevent TEI in mammals but not to the same extent in C. elegans. We argue that a third barrier—that we termed “somatic epigenetic resetting”—may further inhibit TEI and, unlike the other two, restricts TEI in C. elegans as well. While epigenetic information can overcome the Weismann barrier and transmit from the soma to the germline, it usually cannot “travel back” directly from the germline to the soma in subsequent generations. Nevertheless, heritable germline memory may still influence the animal's physiology by indirectly modifying gene expression in somatic tissues. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2023-03-02 /pmc/articles/PMC10074133/ /pubmed/36862326 http://dx.doi.org/10.15252/embr.202256615 Text en © 2023 The Authors. Published under the terms of the CC BY NC ND 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non‐commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. |
spellingShingle | Commentary Ewe, Chee Kiang Rechavi, Oded The third barrier to transgenerational inheritance in animals: somatic epigenetic resetting |
title | The third barrier to transgenerational inheritance in animals: somatic epigenetic resetting |
title_full | The third barrier to transgenerational inheritance in animals: somatic epigenetic resetting |
title_fullStr | The third barrier to transgenerational inheritance in animals: somatic epigenetic resetting |
title_full_unstemmed | The third barrier to transgenerational inheritance in animals: somatic epigenetic resetting |
title_short | The third barrier to transgenerational inheritance in animals: somatic epigenetic resetting |
title_sort | third barrier to transgenerational inheritance in animals: somatic epigenetic resetting |
topic | Commentary |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10074133/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36862326 http://dx.doi.org/10.15252/embr.202256615 |
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