A new study published today in iScience suggests that stress experienced by a father before conception may influence an offspring’s growth by altering small molecular signals in sperm.
https://news.cuanschutz.edu/news-stories/stress-before-conception-may-influence-offspring-growth-cu-anschutz-study-finds?utm_campaign=sperm&utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social
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That’s what epigenetics is, yeah?
In case you were curious like I was:
>In a healthy subject repeated measures longitudinal study, we previously identified let-7f-5p (let-7f) as a key sperm miRNA that was normally lowly expressed across men but was elevated in response to increased prior perceived stress… Let-7f embryos developed at a faster rate until stalling at the morula stage, resulting in reduced blastocyst survival… Sex-specific developmental differences persisted into adulthood, with significantly increased body weight and bone length in let-7f males.
The sample size was only 28 men, and they measured stress through self-reported questionnaires rather than cortisol levels. Wait for replication before drawing conclusions about human inheritance.