Genes aren't everything: what do we humans inherit?

A fundamental discovery about the drivers of healthy embryonic development could rewrite our understanding of what we inherit from our parents and how their life experiences shape us

• The study is the first to identify a protein in a mother's egg that regulates the epigenetic inheritance of a group of genes critical to the development of normal body structures in mammals

  
  

• While the epigenome can be influenced by the environment, including a person's diet and exposure to pollutants, these epigenetic changes are rarely inherited

  
  

• The discovery changes our understanding of inheritance, suggesting that epigenetic inheritance may occur more frequently than previously thought

  
  

Epigenetics is a rapidly growing field of science that studies how our genes are turned on and off, allowing a set of genetic instructions to create hundreds of different cell types in our bodies

Lead researcher Professor Marnie Blewitt said the initial findings surprised the team

The research, led by WEHI in collaboration with Associate Professor Edwina McGlinn from Monash University and the Australian Institute of Regenerative Medicine, is published in Nature Communications

The new study focused on the protein SMCHD1, an epigenetic regulator of the Hox gene identified by Professor Blewitt in 2008, that is essential for normal bone development

In this study, the researchers found that the amount of SMCHD1 in a mother's egg affects the egg's active Hox gene and affects the pattern of the embryo

Dr Natalia Benetti, lead author of the study, said this clearly demonstrates that epigenetic information is inherited from the mother and not just a DNA blueprint genetic information

A drug discovery effort at WEHI is currently using the team's established knowledge of SMCHD1 to design new treatments for developmental disorders such as Prader Willi syndrome and the degenerative disorder FSHD

Maternal SMCHD1 regulates Hox gene expression and patterning in the mouse embryo