ABOVE: C. elegans
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Occasionally, as the nematode worm C. elegans meanders across rotten fruit on the prowl for bacteria to eat, it comes across ones it shouldn’t dine on. Some bacteria are lethal to the animals when ingested, and unfortunately, the worms can’t always distinguish them from the nutritious kind until it’s too late.
Nevertheless, this doesn’t stop them from teaching their young not to make the same mistake, researchers recently realized when watching the nematodes in the lab. Before the animals die from the pathogen, they often lay eggs. These offspring, researchers at Princeton University observed, consistently avoid that particular bacterial species. Evidently, pathogen avoidance—a behavioral habit the mothers learned towards the end of their lifetime—can be transmitted to the next generation, aiding their survival. But it’s not a hard-wired trait; instead, an epigenetic mechanism involving small RNAs appears to be responsible.
That’s the finding of a ...
