Life-long Afterglow

Scientists have long been interested in how adversity, such as a poor diet in early life, might cause lasting effects. Now researchers at the London Institute of Medical Sciences have developed a detailed visual demonstration that poor diet during pregnancy can cause biological changes that last throughout life. The team developed a new technique that allowed them to visualise genes as they were switched 'on' or 'off' in mouse embryos as they grew. They attached enzymes from fireflies and bacteria onto the gene they were studying, and watched how this produced a green glow as it was turned 'on'. Here, the gene is 'on' in the embryo on the left, and 'off' in the embryo on the right. The middle embryo was not labelled. When pregnant mice were fed a low protein diet, it interfered with the expression of genes within the embryo that are important for healthy growth.

Read more about this study here

Written by Deborah Oakley

Deborah Oakley

Writer

Deborah is researching healthy cognitive ageing at the University of Cambridge. She previously worked as a science communicator in London, working closely with the BPoD team.

• Video from work by Matthew van der Pette and colleagues. Produced by Professor Paul French, Imperial Photonics, Imperial College London
• MRC London Institute of Medical Sciences, London, UK
• Video/image copyright held by the authors
• Research published in Cell Reports, January 2017