Parlor Spider...Step In, Little Fly

Insightful thoughts and/or rants from atop the soapbox from one who wishes to share the "right" opinion with everyone.

Monday, December 27, 2010

Cheese, Please...It's For My Grandchildren








"Uh, what are you doing with that scalpel?"

Some things about this post will not be surprising to most of you. Like the fact that scientists regularly use mice in experiments in order to hypothesize things about humans. We all knew that. The fact that genetics is hereditary is also a no-brainer; however, the idea that grandfathers may have a significant effect on grandchildren is a bit of a reach (given the opportunity for the intervening generation to change things up a bit). That this potential for hand-me-downs influences such a thing as a metabolic rate was an eyebrow-archer for me (though I'm not the most up-to-date-on-genetics person out there.
So, the researchers at the UMass Medical School and the university of Texas have concluded through experiments with willing mice that such things are true. This is how the researchers conducted their experiments:
a group of male mice was fed a regular, healthy diet and were allowed to mate (zowie!) with normal, healthy female mice. A control group of males was fed a low protein diet and were also allowed to mate with normal, healthy females (seriously, where does one sign up?) In the offspring of the mice fed with the poor diet, there were hundreds of significant changes in the genetic makeup of the offspring, especially in the genes responsible for fat and cholesterol formation.
While this wasn't all that surprising to me since I'd read that malnourished children tend to become obese adults, the fact that genetics played a vital role was interesting.
The impetus for this study was apparently the famous (who knew?) Overkalix Cohort Study of some years back that found that men who had poor diets as teenagers had grandchildren with a greater potential for diabetes, heart disease and weight problems.
Wow! That's something to think about.
Thanks for the three squares a day, Mom!

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