Scientists from Helmholtz Zentrum München found that diet-induced obesity and diabetes can be inherited by the offspring via both a ovary cell and the sperm.
The research is published in the journal Nature Genetics and was conducted by Prof. Johannes Beckers et al.
In the study, the team used mice that had become obese and had developed type 2 diabetes due to a high-fat diet.
Their offspring were obtained solely through in vitro fertilization (IVF) from isolated oocytes and sperm, so that changes in the offspring could only be passed on via these cells.
The team showed that both oocytes and sperm passed on epigenetic information, which particularly in the female offspring led to severe obesity.
In the male offspring, by contrast, the blood glucose level was more affected than in the female siblings.
The data also showed that – like in humans – the maternal contribution to the change in metabolism in the offspring is greater than the paternal contribution.
The team says this kind of inheritance of a metabolic disorder due to an unhealthy diet could be another major cause for the dramatic global increase in the prevalence of diabetes since the 1960s.
The increase in diabetic patients observed throughout the world can hardly be explained by mutations in the genes themselves (DNA) because the increase has been too fast.
Since epigenetic inheritance – as opposed to genetic inheritance – is in principle reversible, new possibilities to influence the development of obesity and diabetes arise from these observations.
In their theories on heredity and evolution, the team stated that characteristics and traits that parents acquire during their lifetime through interaction with the environment could be passed on to their offspring.
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