title: Hunting for Darwin's gemmules and Lamarck's fluid: transgenerational signaling and histone methylation.
abstract: Recent studies have discovered phenotypes induced by a transient treatment or mutation that persist for multiple generations without mutations in DNA. Both invertebrates and vertebrates exhibit such inheritance, and a range of environmental factors can act as a trigger. Now referred to as transgenerational epigenetic inheritance or TEI, this emerging field faces a big challenge-what molecular mechanisms account for inheritance of TEI phenotypes? This review describes examples of TEI and focuses on the possible role of histone methylation and small RNAs in mediating TEI.
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. Electronic address: yechoi@fas.harvard.edu.
authors.forename: Youngeun
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Choi
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. Electronic address: smango@mcb.harvard.edu.
authors.forename: Susan E
authors.initials: SE
authors.lastname: Mango
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D019175:DNA Methylation; D044127:Epigenesis, Genetic / Q000502:physiology*; D059647:Gene-Environment Interaction; D056084:Genetic Fitness; D000076983:Histone Methyltransferases; D011495:Histone-Lysine N-Methyltransferase / Q000378:metabolism*; D006657:Histones / Q000378:metabolism*; D006801:Humans; D040582:Inheritance Patterns / Q000235:genetics; D015398:Signal Transduction / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D006657:Histones; D000076983:Histone Methyltransferases; D011495:Histone-Lysine N-Methyltransferase
keywords: Cellular memory; Histone methylation; Transgenerational epigenetic inheritance