Many believe that homeland is a humanitarian concept. Actually, almost everyone thinks so, with the exception of the very stubborn ones who incessantly talk about the Russian gene pool. Of course, Ethiopia was not Pushkin's homeland, since he spoke Russian and since childhood he sympathized with the Russian people, something like that. Any humanist will tell you with confidence that all patriotism and national identity is happening in your head (well, let it be “in the heart” - we have not yet begun to anger you, we are just preparing the ground).
For the time being, genetics nodded in agreement. Indeed, the genetic differences between peoples, and even between races, are so subtle that at first glance they seem to be absent. Certainly no genetics can be responsible for the fact that the Jews are cunning, the gypsies steal horses, and the Russian will suck in two polorashki and well, let's walk along the paths, stand under the load, languidly lean against the fixed parts of the escalator balustrade. Not genes, genetics spoke with one voice, but the influence of the social environment and upbringing.
However, now it is becoming clear how much more complicated it is. The work of Swiss scientists is just one of the recent works indicating that some stereotypes (for example, "Acquired traits are not inherited", "The scoop is not a disease, but fate") need to be tested more thoroughly.
Isabelle Mansui and her colleagues tortured mice. Namely: she unexpectedly took away the mother mouse from young mice and then she would dip it into cold water, then she would put it in a cramped box. I did it on purpose, not on schedule, so that the mouse could not get used to it and comfort the kids before the next session of torture.
Naturally, an unpleasant, nervous situation developed in such mouse families. This affected the mice: they grew up depressed, underestimated the risk, did not take care of themselves. But the funny thing is that the mice-boys passed on such a bad character to their descendants in the next generation.
It is easy to say: "conveyed character." But Isabelle and her friends found out exactly what they were broadcasting. It turned out that the semen of mice from poor families contained five specific microRNAs. One of them, miR-375, is definitely associated with stress, the rest are probably also.
You can read about what microRNA is at the very bottom, where the asterisk *. But the short point is that it affects the work of genes: having inherited such a microRNA from your dad, you will not be the same.
The fact that these microRNAs are inherited is well established. The fact that these personality traits are inherited with them required additional verification: for this, the sperm of stressed males was injected into completely unfamiliar females in order to exclude all possibilities of social transmission. There was enough sperm.
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It is also known where these microRNAs can come from. In maturing sperm, receptors for stress hormones (glucocorticoids) are perfectly present. It is through them that little tadpoles learn about how hard life is for daddy (in the case of our little mice - “hard childhood”). And this knowledge is passed on to descendants. Imagine: you will pass on all the darkness of your life to your little ones, and the Komsomol, and the army, and the Fraser platform, and the cooperative movement - and not just a Patek Philippe watch, as the irresponsible Swiss advertisement prompted you to think (well, the Swiss have made it clear, you must admit it was not for nothing that the work was done in Zurich).
It is interesting that the transmission occurs exclusively through sperm, on the paternal side, which fact justifies the word "fatherland" in the title of this article. In fact, it is there, of course, in order to tease people of other political views than the author's. It pisses them off when I use this word, because at this moment I have had an unpleasant face lately.
But in principle, this word, apparently, is exactly what it means. To defend the fatherland means, in particular, to defend our microRNAs. From what? From other microRNAs, one must think, which can be much more disgusting. Inquire about the level of depression, anxiety and suicide among children of survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. And for the children of Vietnam War veterans, there are disappointing suicidal statistics (albeit only for Australia). We do not need such epigenetics, we have enough of our own.
This is the mechanism of inheritance of the abominations that occurred in past generations, discovered by scientists from peaceful Zurich. At the same time, they noticed that there are other mechanisms. The fact is that depression, indifference and disregard for their own lives were inherited not only by children, but also by the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those mice. This is despite the fact that microRNAs were no longer transmitted to future generations. This means that there is something else, besides microRNA, which transfers genetic memory to descendants.
The work of Swiss geneticists does not say anything about how to burn out this memory with a hot iron. But it is absolutely certain that neither an Israeli passport nor a residence permit in Latvia will solve the problem. Well, or they will decide, but in a very distant future. Who told you it would be easy?
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Let us explain here, for the sake of order, what a microRNA is. In general, the regulation of the work of genes occurs basically like this: some environmental factor through a chain of switches interacts with a special thing at the beginning of the gene, and it depends on the state of this thing whether the gene will be expressed (that is, whether RNA will be read from it, but from her, in turn, a squirrel), or will be silent and not give signs about itself. But not so long ago, another important level of regulation was discovered. Namely: special small RNA molecules can be synthesized in the cell. They do not encode any proteins, but, as luck would have it, they repeat with mirror accuracy the sequence of pieces of long RNA encoding proteins. Therefore, they can mate with them, forming double sections.
Double RNA, from the point of view of the cell, is a big nasty thing; the cell tries to destroy it. So it turns out that another barrier stands in the way of gene expression: the gene turned on normally, started working, RNA was formed, but on the way to the protein factory this little rubbish (microRNA) stuck on it - and that's it, the big important RNA no longer works. This thing does not happen due to the malicious intent of nature, it is the most important mechanism for regulating the work of genes.
Alexey Aleksenko