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Friday, February 27, 2009
From the Bench
Tufts’ Larry Feig finds maternal learning passes to offspring
By Marc Songini
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Psychiatrists and educators may find that when dealing with a gifted pupil they may be able to attribute those talents not only to his upbringing but also his mother’s.
Research by Tufts University School of Medicine biochemistry professor Larry Feig is indicating that a mother can acquire a learning capability when young and pass that on to her offspring.
While this almost smacks of the discredited evolutionary theory called Lamarckism, it actually isn’t all that heretical, said Feig. This is just another example of the so-called “epigenetic” inheritance mechanism. The number of those examples are growing, he claimed. While epigenetics operates independently of the classical genetic models, he said, it’s still Darwin at work. “It’s a form of the survival of the fittest,” he said.
Boston resident Feig said his own path to this kind of research was indirect. “As a kid, I was good at math, and in college, I focused on bioengineering, a new area of study.” Most of his career has focused on basic research, so he finds it “satisfying that this new work can be appreciated by nonscientists.”
Feig did previous research on how defective regulation of specific proteins can contribute to cancer. This led him to wonder about how these proteins might function in the brain to affect learning capabilities. This current project involved studying pre-adolescent mice with a genetically created defect in the neurons that support memory, said Feig. The mice had a defective biochemical control mechanism in their nerve cells called long-term potentiation (LTP), which affects learning and memory capabilities.
When placed in an environment that had new objects, the opportunity to exercise, and the presence of other mice, after two weeks, the memory defect was reversed. He discovered that the offspring of these enhanced mice also had normal memory — even though they had been born with the mutation and hadn’t been exposed to a rich environment.
While it’s known that environmental factors can affect a fetus during pregnancy, this shows that the enrichment of the pre-adolescent mice can cross a generation, noted Feig. However, unlike the theory proposed by Lamarck, the memory improvement is limited. “This only goes on to the next generation and no further,” said Feig. “There’s no impact in the long term.
Feig noted that it’s premature to speculate on technologies or treatments that might come from the research.
From The Bench is the first in a series of profiles of local researchers and the new discoveries they have made.
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