Like father, like son

Abstract

Exposing male mice to nicotine or cocaine enables their male offspring to cope with high doses of either, which suggests that such paternal effects are generic, rather than being a response to a specific type of stress.

Keywords: chromosomes; epigenetics; genes; mouse; paternal effects; substance abuse.

Figure 1.. Generic paternal effects in the male offspring of mice.

(A) Adult male mice were fed with normal drinking water (control mice; left) or drinking water containing a toxin (nicotine or cocaine; right), and then allowed to mate with control females. The offspring from control males and the offspring of males fed with nicotine are equally likely to survive the injection of a single high dose of nicotine (first and third columns). However, when they are acclimated to a chronic low-dose of nicotine, the nicotine-fed male offspring have a higher chance of surviving a high dose of nicotine (fourth column) than the offspring from control males (second column). Females, however, die in both groups. (B) The primed tolerance to toxins is non-specific: independent of whether males are fed nicotine or cocaine, their male offspring, after being acclimated to low doses of just one toxin, are more likely to survive a lethal dose of either toxin; mice that have not been acclimated are not likely to survive a lethal dose of either toxin.