Topic: Epigenetic inheritance

Stressful behavior is transferred epigenetically. Here we study the biophysical mechanism of such epigenetic inheritance. Mice were exposed to varying protocols of tone-shock fear conditioning: a predictable group exposed to repetitions of consistent pairs of tone-shock; an unpredictable group exposed to tone and shocks in a random order; a naïve control [MOU1] group exposed to home cage conditions. After two weeks, all groups were exposed to the tone only for three days. The unpredictable group exhibited significantly higher freezing than both control and predictable groups on all three days,