Nature, Nurture, Epigenetics And Vinclozolin
Monday, May 21, 2012 - 18:30
in Biology & Nature
Researchers writing in PNAS state they have seen an increased reaction to stress in animals whose ancestors were exposed to an environmental compound, vinclozolin, a popular fruit and vegetable fungicide, even generations earlier. The findings put a new twist on the notions of nature and nurture and may have implications for how certain behavioral tendencies might be inherited. They exposed gestating female rats to vinclozolin and then put the rats' third generation of offspring through a variety of behavioral tests and found the descendant rats were more anxious, more sensitive to stress, and had greater activity in stress-related regions of the brain than descendants of unexposed rats. read more