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RedditScoutBoy OP t1_j0ap85k wrote

Reply to comment by kjaxz8 in Will my kids inherit the genetic mutations that I aquire during my lifetime? by RedditScoutBoy

Thanks for explanation. It's good you brought in the discutions epigenetics. I read about the Hongerwinter where kids were born for many generations with health problems. Did this happen because of the bad nutrition and harsh condition the mothers lived in that period, so while the children were in womb some genes turned on or off to accommodate that? And are the "mutations" acquired through epigenetics imprinted forever in the genome or will they revert back once the external factor that caused that is removed?

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SaneButSociopathic t1_j0avpbn wrote

Like the parent comment said, it's a rabbit hole...

Some genes only remain epigenetically modfied untill the next cell division, others take multiple rounds, and still others can remain for 1-3 generations based on whether it was the father or the mother that carried the epigenetic modifications.

Simple example would be the Barr-body in women: most of the genes on one of the X-chromosomes in women get turned off shortly after germination - to keep the gene products balanced. But these modifications get reverted before one of the X-chromosomes can end up in an egg.

There is a lot about epigenetics we don't really understand but it seems extremely complex and setting up conclusive experiments is extremely difficult.

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shadowyams t1_j0becmq wrote

> I read about the Hongerwinter where kids were born for many generations with health problems.

This is a common misconception. The Dutch famine cohort consists of individuals born during or shortly after the famine (i.e., prenatal exposure to famine). People have shown that these individuals have elevated risk for several metabolic, cardiovascular, and psychiatric disorders (recent review), as well as persistent changes in DNA methylation.

Whether these epigenetic changes can be inherited is rather controversial. There's been some followup (search "transgenerational") in the Dutch cohort indicating some transgenerational effects. However, the effects aren't super strong, and, as far as I can tell, nobody's done the molecular biology to show that these effects are due to genuine epigenetic inheritance, or something more banal like parental or environmental effects.

> [A]re the "mutations" acquired through epigenetics imprinted forever in the genome ... ?

This would violate a lot of what we know of meiosis. Briefly, there's a lot of evidence indicating that chromatin state is wiped and effectively reset during meiosis through to embryogenesis.

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