It shouldn’t be too surprising that your mother’s diet might influence your health, but what your grandmother ate can do that, too? That’s the conclusion reached by David Martin of the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute in California [1].
Using mice, Martin and his colleagues showed that when genetically identical mice were fed an enriched diet, including B12 and zinc, their pups had dark brown fur, whereas pups born to mice on a standard diet had golden fur.
Mice on the right show the dark fur, while mice on the left show the golden fur variation. Fur color is related to the AVY gene.
The enriched diet nutrients affect fur color by increasing the availability of “methyl” chemical groups, which in turn have the capacity to silence genes. When the AVY gene is silenced, the result is dark fur.
So far, this seems reasonable. However, the researchers found that if they fed all of these pups a standard diet, the dark mice still gave birth to dark offspring. The effects of the grandmothers’ diets lasted at least 2 generations.
Not only does the AVY gene influence fur color, but it is also linked to weight and diabetes. This type of multigenerational epigenetic change might account for an earlier observation that well-fed Swedish men produced grandchildren whose risk of diabetes was 4 times higher than grandchildren of poorly-fed men.
My Swedish grandmother was known for consuming 18 cups of coffee every day….I’m not quite up to her standard, but one begins to wonder what else our ancestors have bequeathed to us.
1. Cropley, J.E., Suter, C.M., Beckman, K.B., & Martin, D.I. (2006). Germ-line epigenetic modification of the murine Avy allele by nutritional supplementation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, USA, 103(6), 17308-17312.
11 Comments
emhughes · November 16, 2006 at 8:59 pm
What an interesting discovery! What a huge responsibility for pregnant women, not only is the diet they eat directly affecting the child within but the future children of their offspring.
jejabe13 · November 19, 2006 at 10:10 pm
I find this study very interesting, as well. If the type of food my grandmother ate is affecting my health, I wonder if the food preferences of my grandmother are playing any role on my own preferences and tastes? Is it possible that the foods my ancestors ate are influencing which foods my own body is more receptive of?
MollyMcLaughlin · November 20, 2006 at 10:32 pm
This study is very cool! I wonder if any other factors besides diet play a role. If your grandma chain-smoked, drank alcohol often, etc. before your mother was born, could this be noticeable on the AVY gene? This could possible explain a genetic predisposition to coffee if your grandmother drank it often.
Milissa · November 21, 2006 at 7:17 pm
I know that we learn habits including eating habits from our parents and grandparents but I had no idea that hair color could be affected by our diets. I just assumed that it was directly related to heritable genes, but it never occurred to me that there could be a correlation between our diets and something such as our hair color. Very interesting article.
PinkShades05 · November 26, 2006 at 12:14 pm
Wow, this is pretty cool! I wonder if this might explain why redheads suddenly show up in a family of all dark-haired or light-haired people. Now we really have to watch what we eat! It’s hard, though, in this day and age where most of the time we eat junk 😛
Ariel_Januszewicz · November 27, 2006 at 12:24 am
I found the part about the weight and diabetes being linked to the same gene very interesting. Diabetes and obesity are very prevalent in my family. The precursors to type 2 diabetes are showing earlier in each of the following generations of my family. I can easily see how the diet of my grandparents and parents may influence if I get diabetes or if my children are more susceptible to it.
amhoffman · December 4, 2006 at 5:25 pm
This study is very thought-provoking. It makes me wonder what the effects of our grandmother’s diet was during times of depression and wars. If people are denied a plentiful amount of an impotant nutrient found in fresh foods or meats, for example, what effect will that have on children in the future? I wonder if this lack of these nutrients caused future generations to have a “need” to store more of it in their body, thus contributing to obesity?
Hepkatbritt · December 6, 2006 at 11:36 am
this is really fascinating. I wonder how much of my grandma’s diet affects me today. Would it be her diet up until she had my mom or would it only be her diet while she was pregnant with my mom. My aunt (my moms younger sister) has two diabetic children and i wonder if perhaps my grandma’s diet may have changed between pregnancies enough to help trigger that.
kellyandreson · December 6, 2006 at 2:32 pm
This article scares me! When my grandparents were at child bearing age they had very uneducated dietary habits. Foods were rich in fat, toxins, and who knows what else. This article reminds me of the importance of a health diet, especially when pregnant. You never know how the choices you make today will effect tomorrow.
MunkeyChowFan · December 7, 2006 at 8:14 pm
I wonder how many generations it would take to breed out the dark fur? Just makes me cringe when thinking about all the other types of chemicals we aren’t aware of in our food and tap water. Family genetics are so intriguing. I too come from good Swedish stock on my father’s side, however, it’s my mother’s side of the family that carries Type 1 diabetic tendencies.
JLedbetter · December 9, 2006 at 6:47 pm
This is really interesting not only because of the effects our parents and grandparents have on us, but because it puts the pressure on and reminds us that what we eat and how we live can effect the children we don’t even know if we’ll have.
My grandmother grew up very poor, with very little to eat because she was one of 16 children. I wonder what that says about my mom and I and what was passed on to each of us. Also, I wonder about my great grandmother who went through 14 pregnancies (two sets of twins) and is still alive, but probably lived on even less food then her children. It’s really interesting what can get passed on. And just think, what we eat now and how we live not only effects us and our children, but our grandchildren and possibly even their children. Wow.
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