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Researchers demonstrated that prion-like proteins can create heritable states that pass across multiple generations in the roundworm C. elegans, a multicellular animal. By fusing a yeast prion domain to a worm protein, they induced an altered state at high temperatures that persisted through subsequent generations at normal temperatures. This inherited state showed characteristics consistent with protein-based epigenetic inheritance, including reversibility and semi-dominant behavior in genetic crosses.
Why it matters
This finding extends protein-based inheritance beyond fungi to animals, suggesting a potential new mechanism for transmitting biological information across generations without DNA changes. It could help explain heritable traits, disease susceptibility, or aging-related conditions that cannot be explained by genetics alone.
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⚠️ Preprint – Noch nicht peer-reviewed
Dieser Artikel wurde noch nicht von unabhängigen Experten begutachtet. Die Ergebnisse sind vorläufig und sollten mit Vorsicht interpretiert werden.
Self-replicating protein conformations can encode persistent epigenetic states that underlie prion diseases and contribute to age-related neurodegenerative disorders in mammals. In fungi, such conformers are transmitted through mitosis and meiosis, enabling robust inheritance of diverse phenotypes. Whether analogous transgenerational protein-based inheritance extends beyond unicellular systems to metazoans remains unknown. Here, we address this question in C. elegans, a genetically tractable, short-lived animal well suited for tracking the transmission of heritable information across generations. We found that a yeast prion domain, when fused to a host protein, induced a heritable altered state that arose at elevated temperatures and persisted across generations at lower temperatures. The emergence of this state depended on known prionogenic yeast repeats, while the state itself was reversible and behaved semi-dominantly in crosses, consistent with a protein-based epigenetic mechanism. These findings provide direct evidence that protein domains capable of adopting self-replicating conformers can encode heritable information in an animal.
Source: Prion-induced heritable states in Caenorhabditis elegans