Are traumas inherited?
Are traumas inherited?
For years researchers have speculated about the possibility that strange behaviors caused by trauma appear in later generations.
It may seem like a bad dream or maybe science fiction, but brain researchers have been speculating for years about an assumption that brings them headlong: are traumas inherited from one generation to another? And if so, how?
The simple fact of posing this question is a curious event, since it is demonstrated that stress or traumas do not modify the sequence of the components of the DNA genetic material. It is a clear example that the classic laws of transmission formulated by Mendel do not always work. However, scientists are still wondering about the mechanisms of transmission of traumas in humans.
Isabelle Mansuy leads a research team at the University of Zurich that is dedicated to analyzing this issue. The results of their experiments have revealed that traumas could be passed on from generation to generation through what is known as micro-RNA, a type of single-stranded RNA that has the ability to control the frequency of expression of certain genes .
The Zurich team showed that, for example, stress is capable of greatly modifying the concentration of micro-RNA in the mice's sperm, at the same time that their behavior is also affected. With this, the mice of the experiment were not the only animals to present striking behaviors, since these also appeared in their descendants, even though they had never been subjected to a stressful situation. The progeny showed depressive behaviors that persisted even in the third generation, in addition to a series of failures in sugar metabolism.
The first and second generation also had abnormal levels of the five micro-RNAs studied both in the blood and in the hippocampus, a region of the brain involved in stress responses.
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