Inherited Stress

On March 7, 2014, New York Times posted an article called “Inheriting Stress.” This article explains how they believe that the stress experienced in a person’s lifetime is correlated with the stress-related problems in that person’s offspring. Scientist tried to prove this by studying the children and grandchildren of the Holocaust survivors. Research showed that the survivors’ children had greater chances of having stress related illnesses. An example of an illness is post traumatic disorder. Researchers also found similar correlations in other populations like in Rwanda, Nigeria, Cambodia, and Armenia. Scientists did a study on female rats. The female rats went through a mild stress procedure for seven days and then mated with non-stressed male rats. The study showed that there were behavioral differences between the adult progeny of the stressed and non-stressed females. The researchers questioned how the stress was transmitted and focused on a gene that encodes a molecule involved in the body’s response to stress. They found larger amounts of the molecular product of this gene in the brains of the previously stressed female rats and also found this gene present in their ova. The researchers believed that the gene was transferred by the ova. Stress can play a major role in a person’s life. This article was very interesting. I have never thought about stress as a molecular product of a gene that can be inherited. Hopefully there will be more research and a result to prove if this is true or not.