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Open AccessJournal ArticleDOI

A critical view on transgenerational epigenetic inheritance in humans.

Bernhard Horsthemke
- 30 Jul 2018 - 
- Vol. 9, Iss: 1, pp 2973-2973
TLDR
The phenomenon of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance is discussed and the difficulty of providing conclusive proof for it in experimental and observational studies is discussed.
Abstract
Transgenerational epigenetic inheritance refers to the transmission of epigenetic information through the germline. While it has been observed in plants, nematodes and fruit flies, its occurrence in mammals—and humans in particular—is the matter of controversial debate, mostly because the study of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance is confounded by genetic, ecological and cultural inheritance. In this comment, I discuss the phenomenon of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance and the difficulty of providing conclusive proof for it in experimental and observational studies.

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Citations
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Phthalate Exposure and Long-Term Epigenomic Consequences: A Review

TL;DR: This review focusses on studies conducted in the field of toxicogenomics of phthalates and discusses possible transgenerational and multigenerational effects caused by phthalate exposure during any point of the life-cycle.
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Genetic impacts on DNA methylation: research findings and future perspectives.

TL;DR: A review of recent milestones in characterizing the human genetic basis of DNA methylation variation over the last decade, including heritability findings and genome-wide identification of meQTLs, can be found in this paper.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI

Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance: myths and mechanisms

TL;DR: Although the inheritance of epigenetic characters can certainly occur-particularly in plants-how much is due to the environment and the extent to which it happens in humans remain unclear.
Journal ArticleDOI

Implication of sperm RNAs in transgenerational inheritance of the effects of early trauma in mice

TL;DR: Small non-coding RNAs (sncRNAs) are potential vectors at the interface between genes and environment and injection of sperm RNAs from traumatized males into fertilized wild-type oocytes reproduced the behavioral and metabolic alterations in the resulting offspring.
Journal ArticleDOI

Editing DNA Methylation in the Mammalian Genome

TL;DR: In this paper, a fusion of Tet1 or Dnmt3a with a catalytically inactive Cas9 (dCas9) enables targeted DNA methylation editing, which is a critical epigenetic mechanism orchestrating gene expression networks in many biological processes.
Journal ArticleDOI

Heritable somatic methylation and inactivation of MSH2 in families with Lynch syndrome due to deletion of the 3′ exons of TACSTD1

TL;DR: Patients from Dutch and Chinese families with MSH2-deficient tumors carrying heterozygous germline deletions of the last exons of TACSTD1, a gene directly upstream of MSH1 encoding Ep-CAM, are described, revealing a correlation between activity of the mutated TAC STD1 allele and epigenetic inactivation of the corresponding MSH 2 allele.

Editing DNA Methylation in the Mammalian Genome

TL;DR: Fusion of Tet1 or Dnmt3a with a catalytically inactive Cas9 enables targeted DNA methylation editing and these tools can editDNA methylation in mice, demonstrating their wide utility for functional studies of epigenetic regulation.
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