Sperm can pass trauma symptoms through generations, study finds

A group of European researchers have discovered that early life traumatic events can alter a non-genetic mechanism governing gene expression in the sperm cells of adult mice.

“Despite all the studies on the subject, there are still no known genes for depression and borderline personality disorder,” says Isabelle Mansuy, a geneticist at the Swiss University ETH Zurich and co-author of the study.

Despite evidence that mothers can also pass down symptoms of trauma, researchers focused on the male pups, because they produce a lot of sperm and breed with many females.

As expected, these pups showed the same symptoms of trauma that their fathers did, despite having never undergone traumatic events themselves.

These symptoms were even apparent in a third generation of mice.

When researchers looked at the sperm of the traumatized mice, they discovered that the microRNAs in these sperm cells were also present in abnormally high numbers.

Even though the third generation of mice exhibited maladaptive behaviors, the second generation didn’t appear to produce sperm with excessive quantities of microRNAs.

Source: Sperm can pass trauma symptoms through generations, study finds

Originally published at Cogly.