The Story
“Could Ancestral Memories of Experiences Really Be Inherited?”
https://thewire.in/the-sciences/could-ancestral-memories-of-experiences-really-be-inherited
by Pratik Pawar
The Wire, February 08, 2019
The Pitch
Hello [Editor],
I am writing to pitch an idea for an article.
Last week, a pre-print paper was published on Biorxiv by a group from Princeton University. The paper talked about their new discovery – Transmission of a learned behavior (of avoiding a certain pathogen) across multiple generations in roundworms. Although epigenetic inheritance across several generations has been documented in plants and nematodes, this paper specifically talks about a learned behavior, an acquired characteristic by a parent and its subsequent transmission to its descendants (through four generations). Another interesting caveat in this finding is the stark disappearance of the pathogen avoidance behavior in the fifth generation of offspring.
In this regard, I was thinking of writing an article, referencing previous studies and explaining this paper in detail. I would also be talking to a couple of experts to get their view on this study.
In my view, this finding has important implications in the field of genetics as the passing of this learned behavior could present an evolutionary advantage to the offsprings and this new finding also hints at the discarded Lamarckian theory. I have a gross structure of the article in my head, let me know if this sounds good to you.
Best Regards,
Pratik Pawar
