The paper
Q. Zhang et al., “The memory of neuronal mitochondrial stress is inherited transgenerationally via elevated mitochondrial DNA levels,” Nat Cell Biol, 23:870–80, 2021.
Under stress, mitochondria rapidly increase their copy number—that is, the number of mitochondrial genomes in each organelle—as part of a process called the mitochondrial unfolded protein response, or UPRmt. This process prompts the up-regulation of certain stress response genes in the cell’s nucleus. Now, a team has found that roundworms that experienced mitochondrial stress pass on a “memory” of that stress to their descendants by propagating the elevated copy number through the germline.
Chinese Academy of Sciences geneticist Ye Tian and her colleagues had previously found that a signaling molecule called Wnt is involved in the neuronal response to mitochondrial stress. Working with C. elegans, the team created transgenic worm lines that expressed the Huntington’s disease–causing protein Q40 in their neurons, which then started secreting Wnt, ...
