Sperm Can Pass Trauma Symptoms Through Generations, Study Finds - The Verge

Sperm can pass trauma symptoms through generations, study fin...
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Sperm can pass trauma

symptoms through
generations, study finds
A study in mice shows that trauma might be
inherited through altered gene expression in sperm
By Arielle Duhaime-Ross on April 13, 2014 01:00 pm
! Email " @ArielleDRoss
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Researchers have put ample effort into

identifying genes that help explain why
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the highest-grossing
R-rated movie ever
cancer or heart disease run in some

families. But scientists still don't know if
some genes can explain why the children
and grandchildren of people who've
Apple's San Bernardino

fight is officially over as
government confirms
working attack
survived traumatic events are more likely
1 de 8
28/03/16 11:25 p.m.
to experience mental illnesses than the

general population. If there is a gene, or
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set of genes, that make the children of

survivors more likely to develop
depression and schizophrenia, scientists
have yet to find it. Now, new research
suggests that many scientists might have
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as conventional labs
and that could be bad
for patients
been looking in the wrong place.

A group of European researchers have
discovered that early life traumatic events
can alter a non-genetic mechanism
governing gene expression in the sperm
cells of adult mice. And they think that this
finding, published today in Nature
Neuroscience, explains why the offspring
of these mice exhibit the same
depressive-like behaviors that their
parents do.
Early childhood trauma

People who
experience early
childhood trauma,
like abuse or war,
often exhibit a
number of hormonal
imbalances. The
mechanisms
involved are poorly
2 de 8
THE IDEA
THAT
ALTERED
GENE
EXPRESSION
CAN BE
28/03/16 11:25 p.m.
understood, but
most scientists
agree that traumatic
events alter gene
PASSED
DOWN IS
CONTROVERSIAL
expression, which
then causes
misregulations in a number of biological
processes. But whether these changes
can actually be passed down to offspring
is a controversial question, because it
would imply that acquired traits traits
that aren't actually encoded in DNA, but
rather arise following certain experiences
are somehow being passed down
through generations.
"Despite all the studies on the subject,
there are still no known genes for
depression and borderline personality
disorder," says Isabelle Mansuy, a
geneticist at the Swiss University ETH
Zurich and co-author of the study. This is
why Mansuy suspects that environmental
factors, in addition to genes, explain why
the effects of trauma are inherited in
certain families.
To study this effect, Mansuy and her
colleagues put male mouse pups and
their mothers under repeated and
prolonged periods of intense stress. They
3 de 8
28/03/16 11:25 p.m.
did so by periodically and unpredictably

removing the pups from their mothers for
hours at a time. Despite evidence that
mothers can also pass down symptoms of
trauma, researchers focused on the male
pups, because they produce a lot of
sperm and breed with many females.
Following these prolonged periods of
stress, the traumatized mice exhibited
altered behaviors, including diminished
fear responses to open spaces and bright
lights, and a number of depressive-like
symptoms. These behavioral changes,
Mansuy says, are the result of changes in
the number of non-coding microRNAs
tiny snippets of genetic material that don't
encode proteins in the blood and
brains of the mice. Under normal
circumstances, she says, microRNAs
regulate gene expression. But the trauma
that these mice experienced resulted in
the over-expression of microRNAs in the
brain and an abnormal dip the production
of certain proteins. "This," Mansuy says,
"makes animals do things wrong."
Trauma in the
un-traumatized
After the pups of the traumatized male
4 de 8
28/03/16 11:25 p.m.
mice were born, scientists monitored their

behavior. As expected, these pups
showed the same symptoms of trauma
that their fathers did, despite having never
undergone traumatic events themselves.
And these symptoms were even apparent
in a third generation of mice.
When researchers
SYMPTOMS
DESPITE
HAVING
NEVER
UNDERGONE
TRAUMA
looked at the sperm

of the traumatized
mice, they
discovered that the
microRNAs in these
sperm cells were
also present in
abnormally high
numbers. "This
means that germ
cells sperm in males and oocytes in

females are very sensitive to
environmental conditions in early life,"
Mansuy says, "and early childhood trauma
has consequences not only for the brain
but also for the germ cell line."
Unfortunately, researchers don't know how
the changes in microRNAs go from being
present in the brain to being present in
sperm. Figuring that out will require a lot
more research. "The stress of the trauma
5 de 8
28/03/16 11:25 p.m.
that the pups undergo most likely does

many things," Mansuy says. She posits
that there might be one common factor
linking the brain to these various effects,
including the number of microRNAs in
sperm. "It could be a stress hormone, a
neuropeptide, or cytokines ... we really
don't know. Perhaps it's a change in the
blood."
And even though the third generation of
mice exhibited maladaptive behaviors, the
second generation didn't appear to
produce sperm with excessive quantities
of microRNAs. "The alteration of
microRNAs doesn't persist beyond the
second generation," Mansuy says, "so it's
possible that the alteration is transferred
into another non-genetic mark before the
third generation."
Finally, Mansuy and her team were unable
to demonstrate a direct link between the
altered sperm microRNAs and the altered
behaviors in the second and third
generations of mice. So, they validated
their findings indirectly by injecting sperm
microRNAs from traumatized males into
the oocytes of female mice. This allowed
them to reproduce the same pattern of
trauma symptoms in the resulting
6 de 8
28/03/16 11:25 p.m.
offspring that they had witnessed in the

pups of the traumatized males.
Eva Jablonka, a
molecular biologist
at Israel's Tel Aviv
University who did
not participate in
the study, said in an
email to The Verge
that this study is
"extremely
valuable." It gives "a
more detailed
mechanistic
THE
MEDICAL
COMMUNITY
IS SLOWLY
BECOMING
AWARE OF
TRANSGENERATIONAL
TRAUMA
explanation of a
phenomenon that
for a long time was supposed to be
biologically impossible," she said. Mansuy
and her team are now studying the effect
of these short RNAs in humans. She notes
that much more research is needed
before scientists can start working on
diagnostic tests or drug therapies. And,
according to Jablonka, the medical
community is only now becoming aware of
these kinds of transgenerational effects.
Still, this study offers yet another argument
for changing the way scientists approach
trauma. "Epidemiological studies need to
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28/03/16 11:25 p.m.
be re-thought," Jablonka said. These

effects are "enormously important"
because they indicate that altering the
stress condition of a child isn't sufficient to
ensure that the next generation will be ok.
To achieve that result, she said, "we also
have to counter the parental effects that
were transmitted."
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Sperm Can Pass Trauma Symptoms Through Generations, Study Finds - The Verge

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Sperm can pass trauma symptoms through generations, study fin...