New Mechanism to Inherit Traits May Advance the Study of Evolution and Disease Treatment

Scientists may have uncovered a new mechanism of inheritance. They've found that genes can be switched off, or silenced, in response to the environment or other factors, and sometimes these changes can be passed from one generation to the next. These findings could advance both the study of evolution and even disease treatment.

The new mechanism is called epigenetic inheritance. Until now, though, it's been poorly understood. That's why researchers have taken a closer look at epigenetic inheritance to see how a parent can pass silenced genes to its offspring.

"For a long time, biologists have wanted to know how information from the environment sometimes gets transmitted to the next generation," said Antony Jose, one of the researchers, in a news release. "This is the first mechanistic demonstration of how this could happen. It's a level of organization that we didn't know existed in animals before."

In order to better understand this particular mode of inheritance, the researchers worked with the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans. They made the worms' nerve cells produce molecules of double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) that matched a specific gene. Molecules of dsRNA are known to travel between model cells and can silence genes when their sequence matches up with the corresponding section of a cell's DNA.

It turns out that the dsRNA could travel from body cells into germ cells and actually silence the genes within the germ cells. In other words, it could be passed from one generation to the next. More surprising was that the silencing could stick around for more than 25 generations. If this same mechanisms exists in other animals, then it could mean that there's a completely different way for a species to evolve in response to its environment.

"This mechanism gives an animal a tool to evolve much faster," said Jose. "We still need to figure out whether this tool is actually used in this way, but it is at least possible. If animals use this RNA transport to adapt, it would mean a new understanding of how evolution happens."

That's not all, either. The silencing effect could be useful for developing treatments for genetic diseases with a process called RNA interference. The new findings pave the way for future studies when it comes to developing therapies and understanding the process of evolution.

The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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