Early-Life Stress Exerts Long-Lasting Effects Via Epigenome

In mice, epigenetic marks made on histones during infancy influence depression-like behavior during adulthood. A drug that reverses the genomic tags appears to undo the damage.

Asher Jones

| 5 min read

early-life stress, histone, chromatin, epigenetics, epigenetic modification, methylation, DNA, protein, stress, adversity, mice, genetics, genomics

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ABOVE: An illustration of DNA (orange) wound around histone proteins (blue), forming chromatin
© ISTOCK.COM, SELVANEGRA

Early life stress, such as childhood trauma, is linked with the development of depression in adulthood, but the mechanisms that drive lasting changes in the brain are not well understood. In a study published March 15 in Nature Neuroscience, researchers found that early-life stress in mice induces epigenetic changes in a particular type of neuron, which in turn make the animals more prone to stress later in life. Using a drug that inhibits an enzyme that adds epigenetic marks to histones, they also show that the latent effects of early-life stress can be reversed.

“It is a wonderful paper because it is really advancing our ability to understand how events that happen early in life leave enduring signatures in the brain so that they influence what we do as adults,” says Tallie Z. Baram, a ...

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Meet the Author

Asher Jones
Asher is a former editorial intern at The Scientist. She completed a PhD in entomology from Penn State University, and she was a 2020 AAAS Mass Media Fellow at Voice of America. You can find more of her work here.
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