Take a chill pill! For the grandbabies!
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Our D-N-A code makes us who we are! But how does stress affect that code?
Enter Stephanie King and team at the University of Lethbridge. They investigated how stress is carried across GENERATIONS of DNA.
First, they subjected pregnant rats to a stressful situation. Then, they tracked gene expression across THREE generations from that first rat.
The great grand-rats showed twenty times more genes with altered expression than the first generation. Most of the changes were associated with regulating brain development! This may be why rats of later generations developed depression-like symptoms! Despite not even experiencing the initial stress!
So don’t take grandma’s cheese! It’s vital to her relaxation. And her wine.
Reference: King, S. E., Schatz, N. A., Babenko, O., Ilnytskyy, Y., Kovalchuk, I., & Metz, G. A. S. (2025). Prenatal maternal stress in rats alters the epigenetic and transcriptomic landscape of the maternal-fetal interface across four generations. Communications Biology, 8(1), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-024-07444-3