I thought I'd repost this Time article about Autism.

[Christopherscience]

Study: Women Abused As Kids More Likely To Have Children With Autism:

http://healthland.time.com/2013/03/21/study-women-abused-as-kids-are-more-likely-to-have-children-with-autism/

Methinks epigenetics is at play here.

 

[Rick Horton]

 

Study: Women Abused As Kids More Likely To Have Children With Autism:

http://healthland.time.com/2013/03/21/study-women-abused-as-kids-are-more-likely-to-have-children-with-autism/

Methinks epigenetics is at play here.

 

 

Is that legacy enough to explain the apparent rise in ASD documented in the most recent government data? The CDC data was based on parental reports of autism; a representative sample of parents were asked whether a doctor had diagnosed their child with autism, and some experts caution that such reports are not as reliable as health records documenting the disorder.

[Christopherscience]

It's never a good idea to infer causality from correlation. All I was was pointing out was that the epigenetic hypothesis might help explain the findings - to test this you'd have to do a study of the histones and methylation of different regions of the child's chromatin (which is doable, but it would be expensive).

Lamarkian evolution, while not as pronounced as Darwinian evolution, has been shown to affect humans (I believe some of the earliest and strongest evidence was from studies from the polish famine during WWII, though, it's been two years since I took biochemistry of human disease at my alma mater). I suspect the girls who are abused have methylation/demethylation of their histones and such - it'd be interesting to measure it - I'd look at the genes that regulate oxytocin if I were to study it, since that might be a good starting point...

But regardless of how it happens - it's still unfortunate, and a sign of the power of development.

If that accounts for a rise in autism in government data - I don't know, maybe.

Whatever the case this seems to be proof that someone abusing children not only hobbles those children, but also their children's children.

[Rick Horton]

 

It's never a good idea to infer causality from correlation. All I was was pointing out was that the epigenetic hypothesis might help explain the findings - to test this you'd have to do a study of the histones and methylation of different regions of the child's chromatin (which is doable, but it would be expensive).

Lamarkian evolution, while not as pronounced as Darwinian evolution, has been shown to affect humans (I believe some of the earliest and strongest evidence was from studies from the polish famine during WWII, though, it's been two years since I took biochemistry of human disease at my alma mater). I suspect the girls who are abused have methylation/demethylation of their histones and such - it'd be interesting to measure it - I'd look at the genes that regulate oxytocin if I were to study it, since that might be a good starting point...

But regardless of how it happens - it's still unfortunate, and a sign of the power of development.

If that accounts for a rise in autism in government data - I don't know, maybe.

Whatever the case this seems to be proof that someone abusing children not only hobbles those children, but also their children's children.

 

Sorry. That isn't resonating with me. An increase in Autism because of abuse?  It doesn't make sense. Families are less abusive to their children now than at any time in history. Autism, by that standard should be decreasing. Historically, families were way more abusive centuries ago. The dark ages, middle ages. I mean considering all things, violent crime is steadily decreasing world wide as time goes on, and societies have a lot more appreciation for caring well for their children that in earlier points in history. 

[Christopherscience]

 

That's
fair - I'm no historian, I don't know what counted as abuse and what
the delicate interplay of development and autism spectrum diseases
(as well as environment) was.

Were
families less abusive in the past?

I
was under the impression that families used to be more cohesive and
caring (but the dissolution of the family in recent times lead to
harsher childhoods - despite less starvation and disease)... But
again - I am not a historian.

I'm
just curious if there was a lamarkian evolution marked by epigenetic
shifts in something like an HDAC that lead to autism because of the
abuse.That would be a a good empirical study vs self
reporting, I think, maybe.

 

Also
I don't know if this fits, but I have a sneaking suspicion that there
might be a different form of abuse in the form of negligence - since
I think with larger families (siblings that interact with other
siblings) and fewer two parent bread-winners in the past - maybe that
would mean more emotional "abuse" nowadays in the form of
negligence...? But, again, this is pure conjecture.

 

 

[Lowe D]

Families were definitely more abusive in the past, but that trend has gone slower and faster in different places, and isn't steady over short periods.  Also the type of abuse that is most prevalent has changed over time.  So your theory is still possible.

[Wesley]

Only since the 1960's has autism been separated from schizophrenia in the medical community and was only used in medicine first in 1911. The fact that autism is more widely known and diagnosed today is obvious as it has been discovered since then.

Saying there was no autism in the middle ages is as ridiculous a statement as epillepsy didn't exist in the past and Julius Caesar communed with the gods, or that people do not seem to be possessed by demons anymore. Medicine has changed quite a bit.

[Waster]

 

Study: Women Abused As Kids More Likely To Have Children With Autism:

http://healthland.time.com/2013/03/21/study-women-abused-as-kids-are-more-likely-to-have-children-with-autism/

Methinks epigenetics is at play here.

 

 

You assume that autism is not purely nurture. Why is that? 

[Christopherscience]

Epigenetics is heavily influenced by "nurture". Lamarckian evolution used to be cast off because people thought Darwinian evolution was the only kind of evolution... Now we know more about gene silencing (small interfering mircoRNAs, for instance, that can regulate ~30% of human genes) and chromatin packing, etc., and it turns out you could hypothetically affect your children's phenotype (however slightly) through your own actions, and even the actions of grandparents have an effect on their grandchildren.

Nothing is purely nurture when one considers that we're biological systems. There is a continuum and we're still learning the scale of nature vs nurture.

The fact that there is a strong correlation to previous abuse means autism is probably more on the nurture side - but the fact that it occurs in the "nurturing" of mothers means it appears to be heritable, which points to an epigenetic link (like smoking during the teen years, or being a mother in a polish famine in WW2, methylates HDACs, which re-pack DNA-protein chromatin structures or whatnot [still an emerging field of study, the discovery of miRNA is less than 20 years old, for instance, and there's a lot left to study]).

I just think it'd be interesting to study the DNA packing of oxytocin precursour genes in these mothers and children.

Beyond that - this is just another article that supports the "a person shouldn't abuse their kids" hypothesis.

[Guest darkskyabove]

 

Lamarckian evolution used to be cast off because people thought Darwinian evolution was the only kind of evolution...

Beyond that - this is just another article that supports the "a person shouldn't abuse their kids" hypothesis.

 

Although I agree, wholeheartedly with your sentiment, as expressed in the final line, I must take exception to the, inadvertent though it may be, mis-characterization of evolutionary theory. In scientific circles it is not referred to as "Darwinian"; that has become a creationist straw man. (Refer to any of the writings of Stephen Jay Gould. An expert at translating evolutionary theory into layman terms.)

Lamarck nor Darwin addressed the potential impact of changing DNA, as it was not known to them. To imply that Lamarck's theories are still taken seriously is incorrect, at best. His ideas applied only to visible, physical characteristics: the general example being that giraffes who stretched their necks to reach higher leaves would pass the longer neck "gene" to their offspring.

Darwin's theory, on the other hand, has no bearing on the relationship between parent and child, or grandparent and grandchild, etc. As these are ALL the same species. Darwin was addressing differentiation of species: how one species would fracture into two, or more, differing species.

 

...you could hypothetically affect your children's phenotype (however slightly) through your own actions...

 

You cannot affect genotype. That requires mutation that survives long enough to pass on.

 

Nothing is purely nurture when one considers that we're biological
systems. There is a continuum and we're still learning the scale of
nature vs nurture.

 

Excellent point. And few things that truly matter are purely genetic. Unless you count being tall, blond, blue-eyed, etc., as factors that truly matter. An exception would be a predilection for cancer, if such exists, as it would not matter how you lived, you would still get cancer.

Pulling myself, slowly, back on topic, I would hope people would understand that research into the afflictions of "fringe" groups is in its infancy. To be clear, if a certain affliction was not highly prevalent and affecting the bodies (and minds) of the politically dominant, incentive (and, especially, funding) would be scarce or non-existent. That is changing, somewhat. To make matters worse, we live in an age of "special interest" science. The vast majority of research is funded by the State, directly, or by corporations that owe their existence to the State. This is not to say that there exists no worthwhile research. But the bias is blatant. I recommend reading Richard Feynman's essay pointing out the deficiencies in research: http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm.

What does this have to do with Autism? Directly, not much. Indirectly, much. The verdict is far from pronouncement. In fact, the evidence is still being presented. Hopefully, the jury is busy, paying attention, and taking copious notes.

If there's one thing I've learned about the Scientific Method: don't try to jump on the bandwagon, unless you can solve the equations of 3D motion in spherical coordinates:

Referring back to quote #1: don't abuse your kids; physically, mentally, or emotionally. Don't "just" have children. Control yourself. If you aren't prepared to invest the effort (physically, mentally, emotionally, financially), STOP! If you have children, please, realize that no one has a set of perfect answers. Life is a journey, not a destination.

Will what I've written help even one child, or parent of a child, with autism? Probably not. I only hope it helps someone look at the world through a rational lens.

[Waster]

 

[...] but the fact that it occurs in the "nurturing" of mothers means it appears to be heritable, which points to an epigenetic link [...]

 

Nurturing means heritable? I am confused. Nurturing means it appears to be nurturing, not nature.

[Christopherscience]

I'm
sorry, I've been taking liberties and taking for granted certain
pieces of knowledge.

So...

You
can affect the "epigenetics" of your genes... Epigenetics
are things that are
"above, on, over, nearby, upon; outer; besides, in
addition to; among; attached
to;
or toward."
the DNA - which can still affect gene expression.

Say,
for instance you're a woman; you have two X chromosomes, but you
could survive with only one (like how a man can survive with only
one)... Were you you express exactly double the genes of your X
chromosome, then you would be sick. You don't need all those genes
all the time and if you had them on all the time, then you wouldn't
be very healthy because you might be over producing some proteins and
under-producing other proteins... So women have an epigenetic thing
called a Barr Body - where the second X chromosome is, more or less,
inactive (though recent research shows that x-inactivation is not as
pronounced as once thought). Basically, the entire chromosome is
regulated (which affects phenotype - the "look" of an
organism... for instance, in cats fur pigment is on the "X"
chromosome... a "tortoiseshell cat"
is a phenotypic look that you can see because of x-inactivation...
this is the most visible example of epigenetics, with the most
genetic material that I could think of). Epigenetics has a lot to do
with how a gene gets expressed, not all genes are on
all of the time.

When
you eat a piece of cake - you might up-regulate your insulin
gene-expression. To express the insulin gene it needs to get copied.
To get copied it needs to be fairly accessible to the "copy
machine" called a polymerase.

Normally
your genes are packed in tight. You've got 3 billion base pairs and
they take up a lot of room. To pack them in - there are things called
histones that are kind of like spools that the strings of DNA wind-up
around. There are more proteins than just histones that spool your
DNA, and, collectively, these DNA-associated proteins are called
chromatin (not to be confused with chromosomes, which is the whole
string, of the 46 "strings" of DNA packed into each of your
cells [this is an oversimplification, and, if you want to split
hairs, there is also DNA in your mitochondria, but just focus on the
spools of thread for now]).

So
you've got these things that wind up your DNA and make your DNA's
gene inaccessible... but you just ate cake and you need your
insulin gene, and you need it now!

So
you unpack that DNA.

There
are proteins that unpack that DNA... and that's very important to
epigenetics...

Because
you might have all the genes that your mother passed down to you...
but you might not have all of your genes unpacked in the same way...

In
fact... you can affect some of the unpacking by certain nurturing
events (like if you eat way too much cake you
insulin unpacking system might get messed up, when your mother, who
didn't eat as much cake and has the same insulin gene as you, -she
has a perfectly fine epigenetic system surrounding her insulin
expression). Interestingly, The genes you get passed down to you
are not a blank slate. You get some of your mom and dad's
epigenetics in addition to their plain-ol' genetics.

So
while you can't change the underlying genes - you may be
able to affect how those genes are expressed; this
is the intersection of nature and nurture on some level... Nurturing
affects nature (to some degree), and vice versa.

To
some degree nurturing is heritable... though I don't
know what the degree is - which is why I'd be curious to see what
"unspooling" of a brain chemical called oxytocin occurs in
abused mothers' epigenetics.

Oxytocin
is, colloquially, called the loyalty neurotransmitter. It's a hormone
that is important in imprinting as a child. I believe there was a
study done with blocking oxytocin in ducks - and it shut off the
behavior of the ducks following their "mother" (I believe
it was a wooden surrogate in the study).

Oxytocin
might be important in autism - I don't know. But I'd be curious to
see... and since there is already a population that the experiment
has been done on (by circumstance) - these people might teach us all
something about the epigenetics of abuse and autism, and I think that
would be good to know about.

...

I hope that clarifies what I meant by putting nurturing in quotations, while referring to epigenetics.

Epigenetics can be heritable, epigenetics is also affected by nurturing.

[Christopherscience]

EDITED:

I'm sorry, I've been taking liberties and taking for granted certain pieces of knowledge.

 

So...

You can affect the "epigenetics" of your genes... Epigenetics are things that are "above, on, over, nearby, upon; outer; besides, in addition to; among; attached to; or toward." the DNA - which can still affect gene expression.

Say, for instance you're a woman; you have two X chromosomes, but you could survive with only one (like how a man can survive with only one)... Were you you express exactly double the genes of your X chromosome, then you would get sick. You don't need all those genes all the time, and if you had them on all the time, then you would be very unhealthy because you might be over producing some proteins and under-producing other proteins... So women have an epigenetic thing called a Barr Body - where the second X chromosome is, more or less, inactive (though recent research shows that x-inactivation is not as pronounced as once thought). Basically, the entire X chromosome is regulated (which affects phenotype - the "look" of an organism... for instance, in cats, fur pigment is on the "X" chromosome... a "tortoiseshell cat" is a phenotypic look that you can see because of x-inactivation, and only occurs in female cats... All of the pigment genes still exists in all of the cells of the cat - the x-inactivation is something that happens "above" the genes... the splotches of color on a tortoiseshell cat are because of the epigentics of the cat's Barr Body [inactive x-chromosome]... this is the most visible example of epigenetics, with the most genetic material [an entire chromosome] that I could think of). Epigenetics has a lot to do with how a gene gets expressed, not all genes are on all of the time.

When you eat a piece of cake - you might up-regulate your insulin gene-expression. To express the insulin gene - it needs to get copied. To get copied it needs to be fairly accessible to the "copy machine" called a polymerase.

Normally, your genes are packed in tight. You've got 3 billion base pairs and they take up a lot of room. To pack them in - there are things called histones - that are kind of like spools that the strings of DNA wind-up around. There are more proteins than just histones that spool your DNA, and, collectively, these DNA-associated proteins are called chromatin (not to be confused with chromosomes, which is the whole string, of the 46 "strings" of DNA packed into each of your cells [this is an oversimplification, and, if you want to split hairs, there is also DNA in your mitochondria, but just focus on the spools of thread for now]).

So you've got these things that wind up your DNA and make your DNA's genes inaccessible... but you just ate cake and you need your insulin gene, and you need it now!

So you unpack that DNA.

There are proteins that unpack that DNA... and that's very important to epigenetics...

You have all the genes that your mother passed down to you... but you might not have all of your genes unpacked in the same way as hers were... Some genes might be tightly coiled and too inaccessible for you to express them. But how your genes are packed and unpacked is subject to change (some changes are more permanent than spooling the thread... some changes are hard to change back, such as chemically modifying the DNA itself... this is typically done in your cells to switch off genes on a more permanent time-scale, for instance your neurons don't need muscle-specific proteins - so your neurons might methylate the "muscle growth factor" gene to shut it off.)

In fact... you can affect some of the unpacking by certain nurturing events (like if you eat way too much cake your insulin unpacking system might get messed up by chance; when your mother, who didn't eat as much cake and has the same insulin gene as you, -she has a perfectly fine epigenetic system surrounding her insulin expression. While the genes are shared in this hypothetical - the epi-genes are different [DNA packing, methylation, miRNAs, etc]). Interestingly, The genes you get passed down to you are not a blank slate in epigenetic terms - the level of expression of genes (due to epigenetics) are passed down, too, to some degree (this is what biochemists informally call Lamarkian evolution - the idea that you, as a parent, can affect the genes of your children beyond the fact that you just give them your raw genes). You get some of your mom and dad's epigenetics in addition to their plain-ol' genetics.

[/anchor][anchor=bbib3]You can't inherit, let's say, a broken bone from your dad, but there are things that you can inherit beyond genes (things affected by "nurture" or epigenetics). There are studies which shows that parental smoking (even if a man stopped smoking, but smoked as a teenager, for instance) can lead to heritable epigenetic shifts in their children (methylation of DNA is one kind of epigenetic factor that was studied... methylation affect the accessibility of a gene being copied) (Hillemacher et al., 2008 Pembrey et al., 2006 and Chong et al., 2007)... I can get you copies of the full texts if you want to read more than just the abstracts.

So while you can't change the underlying genes - you may be able to affect how those genes are expressed; this is the intersection of nature and nurture on some level... Nurturing affects nature (to some degree), and vice versa.

To some degree nurturing is heritable... though I don't know what the degree is (it's still being studied) - which is why I'd be curious to see what "unspooling" of a gene for a brain chemical called oxytocin occurs in abused mothers' epigenetics.

Oxytocin is, colloquially, called the loyalty neurotransmitter. It's a hormone that is important in imprinting as a child. I believe there was a study done with blocking oxytocin in ducks - and it shut off the behavior of the ducks following their "mother" (I believe it was a wooden surrogate in the study).

Oxytocin might be important in autism - I don't know. But I'd be curious to see... and since there is already a population that the experiment has been done on (by circumstance) - these people might teach us all something about the epigenetics of abuse and autism, and I think that would be good to know about.

...

I hope that clarifies what I meant by putting nurturing in quotations, while referring to epigenetics.

Epigenetics can be heritable, epigenetics is also affected by nurturing.

[Christopherscience]

 

Please
see the long reply I made to the poster after you - I explained some
things that pertain to your post.

This
is a technical note:

Lamarkian
evolution might be a more informal way that we biochemists refer to
things like heritable methylation events... When we delineate
Lamarkian evolution from Darwinian evolution, when we talk to each
other, it is to emphasize the genetic from the epigenetic. Darwinian
evolution is tantamount to saying something like "Mendelian
genetics" instead of "permanent, heritable traits that
persist until mutations occur"... I was taking too many
liberties in explaining it. Sorry about that. In Biochemistry of Human Disease (BC 467
at Colorado State) we called heritable methylation events from
teenage paternal smoking - which showed up in children that those
teenagers fathered many years later, as evidence of Lamarkian
evolution (as well as the more famous example of the WWII polish
famines leading to the discovery of modern larmarkian evolution
theory).

Darwinian
evolution theory refers to the observation that it is only through
mutation (i.e. on the DNA level) that novel traits are
inherited/created.

...This
wasn't supposed to be so technical...

I
just was observing that this might be a case of Lamarkian evolution
and epigenetics in abused girls precipitous of higher levels of
autism.

...

Phenotype
does not equal genotype.

...

Yes
NIH funding drives research in the public sector (e.g. state
colleges, government contracted research, etc.)...

But
on the plus side that means there is a whole lot of cheap lab
equipment for me to buy (I got a lot of my own equipment from
university surplus auctions)... so at least there's that... they made
a bubble in biochem equipment after spending tons on research like
sequencing the human genome, now I can buy stuff ridiculously cheaply
- sadly because tax payers were taxed and college students paid high
tuitions... but don't hate the player (me) hate the game (the
government).

...
also not enough "kids" my age want to start biotech
companies, so... supply and demand. The market (me and everyone else) corrects itself and research gets done... but maybe not as efficiently as if the price mechanism were allowed to work. And, yes, it does divert bright minds from following their own research by funneling it through the government... but... at least I'm fighting it a little, while trying to make a quick buck.

[Christopherscience]

"Lamarckian" - I was spelling phonetically and missing the "c"... uhg... I feel kind of dumb now... Ask me about lithotrophs - not epigenetics; metal-eating bacteria is my specialty.

[Waster]

To who are you talking to? Because two times you are not answering my question. Do you feel the need to justify your own position? 

[Christopherscience]

I  was talking to user name darkskyabove.

Do I feel the need to justify my position?

No. Not anymore.

If you, or anyone, wants to learn about genetics and the intersection of nature and nurture then they can do that.

The nature vs. nurture argument is long standing, and the research into epigenetics is interesting... but admittedly it's not for everyone... so forget I mentioned it.

Have a nice day.

[Guest darkskyabove]

 

I  was talking to user name darkskyabove.

 

Thanks for the details. I just may find time to renew my interest in evolutionary science.

I do believe some of us (namely, ME) have gone on a (reasonable) tangent. The "Nature vs. Nurture" debate is probably deserving of its own thread(s). Same for evolution. I do see philosophical implications to both topics (not to mention the linkage between them).

 

 

[...] but the fact that it occurs in the "nurturing" of mothers means
it appears to be heritable, which points to an epigenetic link [...]

 

Nurturing means heritable? I am confused. Nurturing means it appears to be nurturing, not nature.

 

I think Christopherscience was meaning that the types/levels/nuances of nurturing might be inheritable.