Matthew Eroglu and his research team at the University of Toronto shifted their focus from cancer signaling pathways after discovering that their research worms were becoming increasingly feminine and sterile over generations. Their investigation revealed that this effect was due to proteins with amyloid structures that accumulated and were inherited, challenging previous notions of inheritance that predominately focused on nucleic acids. Their findings suggest a new mechanism of inheritance that might also help explain missing heritability in traits and diseases, as highlighted by expert Tanya Vavouri. The study was published in Nature Cell Biology.
For Tanya Vavouri, group leader at the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute, an expert in epigenetic processes and their transmission who was not involved in this work, it is a very good study that reveals a new mechanism of inheritance.
Their work of the following years led to further and even greater surprises. The effect on the worms was due to something that was being inherited and accumulated in the offspring.
That something and this was the final surprise turned out to be proteins with an amyloid structure and prion properties, similar to those that accumulate in Alzheimer's plaques.
This is an additional mechanism on top of genes that could explain part of our missing heritability, that is to say, the fact that several traits behave in a more hereditary manner.
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