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Mice that recover from infection can pass on stronger immunity to their future pups, according to a new study that expands the known effects of epigenetics in mammals.
“We wanted to test if we could observe the inheritance of some traits to subsequent generations, let’s say independent of natural selection,” says Jorge Dominguez-Andres, an immunologist at Radboud University Nijmegen Centre in the Netherlands and coauthor on the study. “And what we observed is that the offspring of the mice that had survived infection were more resistant to infections.”
Transgenerational transmission of traits related to the immune system have been seen before in plants, birds, and invertebrates, including flies, beetles, and worms. To test whether a similar mechanism operates in mammals, Dominguez-Andres and his colleagues exposed adult mice to infectious fungi or zymosan, particles made from yeast used to stimulate the immune system. When either parent was ...
