An ambitious EC-funded research initiative on epigenetics advancing towards systems biology

Response written by: Elphège Nora, PhD - postdoctoral researcher in Edith Heard's laboratory, Institut Curie

Germ cells of human beings (and all other organism actually) are unfortunately unable to "copy" the skills and knowledge of their producer. Children/offspring, develop from the fusion of two gametes (germ cells), one from the mother and one from the father. This fusion is actually the end point of germ cell maturation. Thus, each child is a unique mixture of its two parental genomes. However, they are born without any recollection whatsoever of their parent's memory, knowledge, or skills acquired by training during the previous generation. It is indeed a bit discouraging not to be able to transmit the skills we worked so hard to develop directly through our germ cells! However, as humans, we have hopefully developed other ways to transmit our skills and knowledge to our children: though schooling and education. That's another way to transmit skills across generations, and even better, we can transmit these to many more individuals than our biological children!