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Lamarck revisited: epigenetic inheritance of ancestral odor fear conditioning

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A study shows that when mice are taught to fear an odor, both their offspring and the next generation are born fearing it. The gene for an olfactory receptor activated by the odor is specifically demethylated in the germ line and the olfactory circuits for detecting the odor are enhanced.

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Figure 1: Model for epigenetic inheritance of odor fear conditioning.

Katie Vicari

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Moshe Szyf is in the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.,

    Moshe Szyf

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  1. Moshe Szyf
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Correspondence to Moshe Szyf.

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Szyf, M. Lamarck revisited: epigenetic inheritance of ancestral odor fear conditioning. Nat Neurosci 17, 2–4 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3603

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