In the perennial question of nature versus nurture, a new study suggests an intriguing connection between the two. Salk Institute scientists report in the journal Science that the type of mothering a female mouse provides her pups actually changes their DNA. The work lends support to studies about how childhood environments affect brain development in humans and could provide insights into neuropsychiatric disorders such as depression and schizophrenia.
"We are taught that our DNA is something stable and unchanging which makes us who we are, but in reality it's much more dynamic," says Rusty Gage, a professor in Salk's Laboratory of Genetics. "It turns out there are genes in your cells that are capable of copying themselves and moving around, which means that, in some ways, your DNA does change."
For at least a decade, scientists have known that most cells in the mammalian brain undergo changes to their DNA that make each neuron, for example, slightly different from its neighbor. Some of these changes are caused by "jumping" genes -- officially known as long interspersed nuclear elements (LINEs) -- that move from one spot in the genome to another. In 2005, the Gage lab discovered that a jumping gene called L1, which was already known to copy and paste itself into new places in the genome, could jump in developing neuronal brain cells.
[For more on this study by the Salk Institute, go to https://www.sciencedaily.com/r.../03/180322140945.htm]
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