发明家的小故事简短:高脂肪的饮食习惯会对精子产生影响

来源:百度文库 编辑:中财网 时间:2024/05/04 12:50:36

高脂肪的饮食习惯会对精子产生影响

OBESE male mice tend to sire unhealthy offspring. And it seems diet is to blame, causing tiny changes in sperm that may lead to metabolic disorders in mouse pups. The discovery brings us closer to understanding how lifestyle choices affect the health of future generations.

肥胖的雄性老鼠更容易产下不健康的后代。饮食习惯是罪魁祸首,不良的饮食习惯造成精子的微妙变化,导致老鼠幼崽新陈代谢紊乱。这一发现让我们更加能够理解生活方式的选择是如何影响我们子孙后代的健康的。

The effects of diet and smoking become imprinted onto DNA via chemical modifications that regulate gene activity and protein production within a cell.

饮食和吸烟通过细胞内影响基因活动和蛋白质产生的化学修饰物在DNA上留下印迹。

Such "epigenetic" changes were thought to be reset in sperm because the DNA in the nucleus opens up and is repackaged before and after fertilisation. This process was thought to wipe the epigenetic slate clean.

这些“表观遗传”的改变会被重新安置到DNA中,因为在受精前后,细胞核中的DNA会被打开并重新包装。这个过程将会清除表观遗传之前的特征。

Now Maria Ohlsson Teague and Michelle Lane at the University of Adelaide, Australia, have shown that mice brought up on a bad diet have offspring that are prone to insulin resistance, suggesting that epigenetic changes persist in some regions of sperm cells.

澳大利亚阿德莱德大学的玛利亚·奥尔松·蒂格和米歇尔·莱恩的研究显示,在不良的饮食习惯下长大的老鼠生育的后代更容易产生胰岛素抵抗现象,这表明表观遗传的变异在精子细胞中的一些地方能够存留一段时间。

To investigate, the team screened mouse sperm for tiny bits of genetic material that switch off protein production. They identified 21 of these microRNAs that were expressed differently in the sperm of mice fed on a high fat diet compared with those on a healthy diet.

为了研究,该小组检查了老鼠的精子,看有没有停止了蛋白质生产的小部分遗传物质。他们鉴别了21组老鼠精子中的微小RNA,这些RNA在高脂肪饮食的老鼠中表现出的结构与健康饮食的老鼠体内不一样。

The pair used a database of known microRNAs to predict the effect of the altered markers. The top biological networks likely to be affected were associated with embryo and sperm development, and metabolic disorders.

两位学者用一个已知的微小RNA数据库来预测变异标记的影响。易受影响的上层生物组织与胚胎和精子发展及新陈代谢紊乱密切相关。

The large amounts of fat around the testes of obese mice, "could alter the environment and encourage epigenetic changes", says Teague, who presented the results at the 14th World Congress on Human Reproduction in Melbourne, Australia, this month.

肥胖的老鼠睾丸附近的大量脂肪“会改变生物坏境并引发表观遗传的变异”,蒂格说。她将这一结果在本月于澳大利亚墨尔本举行的第十四届世界人类繁殖大会上发表了。

In the future, it may be possible to screen sperm during IVF or block unwanted epigenetic changes with drug therapy, says Teague. "We prefer to encourage healthy lifestyles," she adds.

蒂格说,未来,在试管受精过程中保护精子或通过药物治疗来限制不想要的表观遗传变异将成为可能。她补充道:“我们提倡健康的生活方式。”

David de Kretser at the University of Melbourne says the work is "fascinating". Now the key is to understand when all this is happening, he says.

墨尔本大学的大卫··克雷泽说,这项工作具有极大的“吸引力”。现在的关键是要理解这一切何时发生,他说。