They say you are what you eat, but you are also likely to be what your mother and grandmother ate before her.
A new study on animal pregnancy adds to the growing body of data that a mother’s surroundings can have a long-term impact on her offspring’s metabolism.
This intergenerational effect was originally discovered in juvenile silk moths in 1909. The winter behavior of these moths did not result from specific inherited genes, but rather from how their bodies’read’ these genes or switched them ‘on’ or ‘off’.
And the atmosphere of a mother influenced the outcome.
The potential for these ‘epigenetic’ modifications has now been observed in a variety of different animal species, including humans, although how they traverse intergenerational boundaries remains unknown.
Female silkworms (Caenorhabditis elegans) provide their children and grandkids with greater brain protection when they eat particular types of food, according to researchers at Monash University in Australia.
The study was not conducted on humans, but because C. elegans shares many genes with humans, it provides some intriguing insights into how epigenetic modifications may occur in the natural world.
If a mother’s diet alters germ cells, such as eggs or sperm, while she is pregnant, studies suggest that it can affect the baby for better or worse.
When scientists fed roundworm larvae ursolic acid, a chemical found in apples and herbs, the offspring were partly protected from a normal breakdown in neuronal connection.
Ursolic acid appears to ‘turn on’ a gene in the worms that produces a form of fat known as a sphingolipid, sphingosine-1-phosphate. This fat protects the axons of neurons in the brain, and preliminary findings indicate that it can go from the intestines of mother worms to the eggs in her uterus.
Researchers discovered that elevated amounts of particular sphingolipids caused major metabolic alterations in worm larvae, which were maintained throughout development and for another generation.
“This is the first time that a lipid/fat has been shown to be inherited,” says Monash University biomedical researcher Roger Pocock.
“Furthermore, feeding the sphingolipid to the mother protects the axons of two subsequent generations.” This indicates that a mother’s nutrition can effect not only her children’s brains, but perhaps future generations as well. Our research promotes a nutritious diet during pregnancy for optimal brain development and wellness.”
A review of the work published in Nature by US epigeneticist Nicholas Burton provides some crucial context.
C. elegans is an oviparous animal, which means its eggs hatch after they’ve been laid, according to Burton. It is unclear whether the current study’s findings apply to viviparous creatures, such as mammals, that give birth to live young.
However, epidemiological studies in humans reveal that low birth weight, which can occur as a result of nutritional deficits during pregnancy, might raise a child’s chance of developing metabolic disorders such as cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes later in life.
Burton expects that “studies of model organisms like C. elegans might pave the way for many new discoveries about how and why animals link maternal and offspring metabolism.”
The study was published in Nature Cell Biology.
