I am doing some research on the relationship between stress and its possible influence on transgenerational transmission of a trait.
I would love to ask some questions, namely regarding the design of our future experiments. It would also be extremely helpful for putting my ideas of stress-associated transgenerational transmission of an acquired trait into evolutionary perspective.
look for Sergio Rasmann papers, e.g., Herbivory in the Previous Generation Primes Plants for Enhanced Insect Resistance
What is your model organism? And what is the trait that you are looking at?
You could check this paper for ideas: http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v17/n1/full/nn.3594.html
I'd be happy to discuss further details of your project also in terms of the molecular mechanisms of inheritance.
The paper by Dias and Ressler cited above is quite amazing. How olfactory receptor stimulation can alter DNA methylation in sperm is difficult to explain or even to come up with a hypothesis. These studies definitely need to be repeated before any firm conclusions can be drawn. Studies with mice are subject to much variation and investigator bias, something we have learned in the cancer field. Anyhow, I hope this holds up as it is extremely provocative.
Look at this:
"tobacco plants infected with TMV exhibited an increase in HRF in two consecutive generations. ...
Analysis of the response of the progeny of infected plants to TMV, Pseudomonas syringae, or Phytophthora nicotianae revealed a significant delay in symptom development. Infection of these plants with TMV or P. syringae showed higher levels of induction of PATHOGENESIS-RELATED GENE1 gene expression and higher levels of callose deposition." Palak et al., Plant Physiology August 2010 vol. 153 no. 4 1859-1870
Thanks so much for all the answers!!!! I am very grateful for all the suggestions - I think the idea of domestication can be extremely useful to provide some evidence to back up our theory with real data... Once again, thank you so much, Julie
Julie, I just put together a blog post on transgenerational epigenetic inheritance: http://episona.com/3-examples-transgenerational-epigenetic-inheritance/. Not sure if it would be helpful but at least wanted to point you to it!
In literature there are numerous good examples of epigenetic changes induced by stress conditions especially in plants. These included alterations in DNA methylation, covalent histone modifications and small RNA levels. However, to my best knowledge, none of these changes are transmissible to next generations and hence cannot be called as "transgeneration" and do not have adaptive signifikance in terms of Lamark theory. Second, experiments should be well controled in order to exclude natural epigenetic variation which may be quite high in some systems. There are reports of epigenetic variation at the level of DNA methylation even between monozygous siblings. Zdravi.:-)
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