An inheritance of long life

Abstract

Like many stressors, food deprivation elicits physiological responses not only in affected individuals but also in their progeny. People descended from ancestors who were exposed to food shortage have been reported to live longer than those from well-fed lineages (1, 2). Similarly, in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, an acute starvation event promotes life-span extension even three generations out from this event (3). Epigenetic mechanisms (heritable changes in gene expression that occur without altering the DNA sequence), including histone modifications, have been implicated in this transgenerational memory (4). Nevertheless, how they are linked to the metabolic state of the parent is not well defined. On page 1353 of this issue, Zhang et al. (5) show that lysosomes, degradative organelles activated by food limitation, stimulate epigenetic changes that contribute to transgenerational longevity in C. elegans. Notably, these changes involve the shuttling of the histone variant HIS-71 from somatic tissue (intestine) to the germ line (reproductive cells).