• Question: If a child is affected by a brain injury at an early age, can any of the issues gained as a result of said brain injury be inherited by that person's children?

    Asked by XandyisBAE to Matt on 5 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Matt Bawn

      Matt Bawn answered on 5 Mar 2018:

      I think that most people would probably say no in so far as a childhood brain injury should not alter the persons DNA or genes which are the biological factors passed on to children. However, this article: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170306134233.htm, suggests head injuries can alter genes but that is not a consensus opinion. Indeed the authors of the science behind this article have also stated that fructose can also change genes in the brain: http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/fructose-alters-hundreds-of-brain-genes-which-can-lead-to-a-wide-range-of-diseases. I would not necessarily believe these works until they were verified by other experiments but wanted to highlight some questions currently being answered. I think that epigenetic [http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/epigenetics/inheritance/] changes due to a brain injury could have some effects on the children and indeed the granschildren of the injured but that they would be likely to be complex and not necessarily obvious or detremental.

Comments

  • Photo: Gemma

    Gemma commented on :

    So, in thinking about questions like this, it’s important to know the difference between your own body, and what’s known as your “germline”, which is the cells that go on to make your children i.e. your eggs or sperm. It may be that a brain injury would affect how genes are turned on or off in your own brain, or even in other parts of your body, which is what is being described in the article Matt has found for you: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170306134233.htm. So, yes, brain injury could go on to lead to problems later in life for the person who had the brain injury due to changes in the way their own genes are turned on and off. Such problems in the parent could affect the children, for example if a parent had mental health problems as a result of a brain injury, this could impact on the environment their children grow up in. However, in order for this to have any *genetic* effect on their children, there would have to be changes in the genes in their sperm or egg cells. I don’t think there would be any direct changes to the DNA code in the sperm and egg cells as a result of a brain injury. The only way that the effects of a brain injury could be inherited by that person’s children, are, as Matt mentions, through what is known as “epigenetics”. Epigenetics is a way that the environment can influence the ways genes are turned on and off that can be inherited, but that does not alter the DNA code itself. So, through epigenetics, it is possible that the experience or environment of a parent can have a biological effect on their children without causing a change in their DNA code. For example, if a mother is starving when pregnant, this could have an effect on how her children’s bodies deal with fat – it has been seen that there are higher rates of obesity in children born to starving mothers when they are adults. I don’t think there is any evidence at this point in time that specifically a brain injury in a parent would cause epigenetic changes in their child, and as Matt say, even if it did, it would be very difficult to tease out this information, and the effects wouldn’t necessarily be bad. Epigenetics is a very hot topic in biology at the moment – it is very mysterious, and there is a lot still to learn, but people are very excited about it because it may be possible to alter things caused by epigenetics in a way that is reversible. You can think of epigenetics as the interface between environmental factors and genetics/DNA, in other words where nurture and nature meet!