Parents May Pass Down More Than Just Genes...

An obese man before undergoing bariatric surgery donated sperm to a Danish scientist. A week after the procedure he donated again and then a year later his third sample. Scientist began to study that perhaps the man’s experiences can alter his sperm; in turn altering changes in his children. They conducted an experiment at the University of Copenhagen with rats to test their hypothesis. They fed male rats a high-fat diet and mated them with females. Their offspring tended to gain more weight and developed more fat, having trouble with insulin levels. Rats also exposed to stressors such as the odor of a fox affected the offspring genes. The male rats gave offspring to pups with dampened responses to stress. After much testing with rat the scientists then decided to recruited six obese men getting bariatric surgery. Their aim was to see if their genes change with losing weight. A year later more than 3,900 genes were identified to be different. Thus proving that our genes change with different variables.
Its great to know and understand these studies. It teaches us that perhaps its not totally someone’s fault for being obese. I learned that regardless of the situations we choose, we have to take into consideration that our genes are being passed to future generations.

Mutation Can Increase Risk of Aortic Rupture

It has long been known that some people are more susceptible to heartbreak than others are. But research from the Yale School of Medicine and Celera Diagnostics has revealed that a certain gene mutation can make some people more likely to suffer from a literal break in their heart-specifically, ruptures in the wall of the aorta, the main artery of the heart and the largest one found in the human body. Thoracic aortic aneurysms, or bulges in the wall of the aorta, can develop completely undetected and lead to full ruptures. If these ruptures are not treated immediately, death can become imminent.

A protein called FBN-1 is imperative for providing strength to the walls of the aorta. After studying hundreds of patients at the Yale medical center, scientists confirmed that a genetic variation called rs2118181 put patients at a higher risk for thoracic aortic aneurysms and subsequent ruptures. While surgeries for these ruptures can work wonders, identifying people who are at risk early on will be an important step for ensuring that more lives are saved than lost in the future.

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