The Epigenetic History Of Stress During Pregnancy
Thursday, August 7, 2014 - 11:42
in Biology & Nature
Your stress levels may be another thing you can blame on your mother. Scientists investigating pregnancies in four generations of rats show that inherited epigenetic effects of stress could affect pregnancies for generations. The researchers believe that these changes are due to epigenetics - the arrangement and expression of our genes. In most cases this refers to DNA methylation of the nucleotide base pairs. In this study the researchers believe the epigenetic changes are due to microRNA (miRNA) - non-coding RNA molecules that play a role in regulating gene expression. read more