According to the report of Singapore Lianhe Morning Post on March 26, research by the Salk Institute in the United States shows that the "motherhood" of female mice will change the DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) of "mouse babies", which is expected to provide new ideas for how children's growth environment affects brain development and the treatment of depression and other mental diseases.
The research was published in the latest issue of the American journal Science.
It is reported that research shows that the activity level of a certain "jump" gene in the hippocampus of mice who have been carefully cared by "mouse mothers" is low, and vice versa. Hippocampus is an important part of human and vertebrate brain, which is mainly responsible for memory storage, conversion and orientation. In this regard, the researchers hypothesized that the offspring of careless mothers were under more pressure, which led to more frequent replication and movement of this gene.
Gach, senior author of the paper and professor of Salk Genetics Laboratory, said that people believe that DNA will not change, but in fact it is dynamic, and some genes in cells can replicate and move by themselves.
In the past 10 years, scientists have realized that the DNA in mammalian brain will change to produce new neurons slightly different from the surrounding neurons, and this change is caused by the "jump" gene.
Previously, Gage's research team found that a jumping gene called L1 "jumps" from one point of the genome to another during the development of nerve cells. The researchers hypothesized that these changes could allow more diverse nerve cells to fine tune their function, but this could also lead to mental illness. Bedrosian, the first author of the paper, said: "We assume that changes do not happen randomly, but are caused by some factors in the brain or the environment."
The researcher analyzed the DNA in the hippocampus of the "mouse baby" and found that maternal love was associated with the number of L1 skip gene copies. Careful mothers had lower L1 gene copies and careless mothers had higher L1 gene copies, leading to higher gene diversity in the brain. However, other "jumping" genes other than L1 do not have the above association. At the same time, L1 gene replication has nothing to do with heredity.
The researchers said that it is not clear whether the increase in the number of L1 gene copies will cause functional consequences. The team will continue to study whether the cognitive behavior of mice is related to the number of L1 gene copies in the future. (Intern editor: Zhou Simin Reviewed by: Tian Ruizhe)
