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EPIGENETICS

Memory of ancestral mitochondrial stress

Ancestral experience of mitochondrial stress is now found to render progeny of the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans more resistant to the same insult for up to four generations. A DNA modification, N6-methyldeoxyadenine, is implicated in the inheritance of this stress adaptation.

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Fig. 1: Ancestral exposure to mitochondrial stress increases stress resistance trans-generationally in C. elegans.

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Correspondence to Ben Lehner.

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Offenburger, SL., Perez, M.F. & Lehner, B. Memory of ancestral mitochondrial stress. Nat Cell Biol 21, 303–304 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41556-018-0255-4

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