A growing body of evidence indicates that ancestral environmental factors can influence the physiology and behavior of the offspring, a process known as epigenetic inheritance. However, in each generation the epigenetically inherited modifications are thought to be erased in cells called primordial germ cells (PGCs), the precursors to sperm and eggs, leaving scientists to question how epigenetic inheritance occurs. In a recent paper published in Science, researchers from the University of Cambridge investigated how mouse PGCs reset their epigenetic modifications and remove DNA methylation on a genome-wide scale during development in an effort to learn more about trans-generational epigenetic inheritance.
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