December 27, 2010

You Are What Your Father Ate, Too: Paternal Diet Affects Lipid Metabolizing Genes in Offspring, Research Suggests

ScienceDaily for December 24, 2010 reported on how the diet of fathers affects the offspring.

We aren't just what we eat; we are what our parents ate too. That's an emerging idea that is bolstered by a new study showing that mice sired by fathers fed on a low-protein diet show distinct and reproducible changes in the activity of key metabolic genes in their livers. Those changes occurred despite the fact that the fathers never saw their offspring and spent minimal time with their mothers, the researchers say, suggesting that the nutritional information is passed on to the next generation via the sperm not through some sort of social influence.
A LiveScience article is here.