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In laboratory lines of Pristionchus pacificus, the finding appeared in mouthparts that either stayed narrow or became predatory.<\/p>\n
Tracking those forms across generations, Shiela Pearl Quiobe at the Max Planck Institute for Biology T\u00fcbingen (MPI<\/a>) documented vitamin B12 as the factor tied to inherited predation.<\/p>\n The change did not end with the worms that consumed the vitamin, but continued after later generations returned to ordinary food.<\/p>\n That persistence focused attention on what mothers passed forward, linking diet and inheritance through nutrients stored in eggs.<\/p>\n How B12 alters traits<\/p>\n Vitamin B12 made the predatory mouth form appear quickly when worms ate bacteria or supplemented food on treated plates.<\/p>\n In high enough amounts, the vitamin kept that form showing up after the animals returned to ordinary food.<\/p>\n Lower amounts still started the predatory shape, yet the inherited effect faded after one or two generations once food changed.<\/p>\n \u201cOur findings show that vitamin B12<\/a> does not simply affect the individual consuming it, but can shape the biology of future generations,\u201d said Quiobe.<\/p>\n Bacteria supplied signals<\/p>\n A bacterium called Novosphingobium pushed worms toward predation because it supplied vitamin B12 and other food signals.<\/p>\n When scientists used bacteria unable to make the vitamin, descendants lost the inherited predatory pattern as soon as food switched.<\/p>\n Adding vitamin B12 back restored that carryover, while the defective bacteria still partly shaped the first generation<\/a>.<\/p>\n Other bacterial chemicals can help build the mouthparts, but vitamin B12 carried the lasting signal over time.<\/p>\n Nutrients stored in eggs<\/p>\n Mothers passed the effect through vitellogenin, a yolk protein that feeds embryos, rather than through vitamin B12 itself.<\/p>\n Vitamin-rich diets raised vitellogenin gene activity, which packed more nutritional support into eggs before development began across generations.<\/p>\n Worms missing the egg uptake system could become predatory<\/a>, but their offspring lost the pattern in the next generation.<\/p>\n The result places egg contents alongside DNA sequence as part of inherited change across generations.<\/p>\n Genes remain unchanged<\/p>\n The worms inherited a behavior-linked mouth form without a DNA rewrite, giving the finding its strongest point.<\/p>\n Biologists call such carryover epigenetic inheritance, when conditions affect descendants without directly changing genetic letters after one generation ends.<\/p>\n Earlier famine research<\/a> in humans found lasting DNA marking differences after prenatal exposure, but mechanisms remain difficult to separate.<\/p>\n Worm experiments give scientists a cleaner cause-and-effect path about diet, while keeping human claims out of reach.<\/p>\n Dose determines outcome<\/p>\n At very small amounts, added vitamin B12 preserved predatory memory after worms left rich food.<\/p>\n With moderate amounts, the animals still formed predatory mouths, but the carryover stopped short of true inheritance after the vitamin disappeared.<\/p>\n Even trace amounts could trigger the mouth change, while extremely low amounts left worms near their usual state under the same setup.<\/p>\n Dose mattered because the first response was easy to start, but memory required more vitamin across generations.<\/p>\n Amino acid role found<\/p>\n Cells needed methionine, an amino acid used in protein building, for the vitamin signal to continue.<\/p>\n Supplements of methionine slowly produced the meat-eating mouth shape and maintained the pattern for several later generations after repeated exposures.<\/p>\n By contrast, folate \u2013 another B vitamin involved in cell chemistry \u2013 did not create a clear predatory response under these tests.<\/p>\n That contrast points to a specific route inside cells, not a general effect of richer food or plate conditions.<\/p>\n Predation in the wild<\/p>\n Long before this vitamin test, the Max Planck group followed 110 groups<\/a> of genetically similar worms across 101 generations on different diets.<\/p>\n That earlier work showed predatory mouthparts persisted only after at least five generations on the bacterial diet before lines switched back.<\/p>\n In nature, these worms often ride beetles and face crowded food after insects die in soil once they arrive.<\/p>\n A remembered predatory form could help descendants compete when bacteria, fungi, and other worms share one carcass during that brief period.<\/p>\n Human relevance limited<\/p>\n Humans also need vitamin B12<\/a> for nerves, blood cells, and DNA maintenance, but this worm result is not medical advice.<\/p>\n During pregnancy and early childhood, B12 supports growth because dividing cells need it to handle key chemical reactions.<\/p>\n No human research has shown that B12 programs inherited traits in people through this worm pathway.<\/p>\n Still, the finding sharpens a broader lesson: nutrition can alter biology beyond a single lifetime for some animals.<\/p>\n Next steps in study<\/p>\n By tying diet, bacterial chemistry, egg nutrition, and inherited behavior into one chain, the work gives a rare clean example.<\/p>\n Future tests should measure memory length through offspring and identify other nutrients that produce similar effects in controlled lineages.<\/p>\n The study is published in Nature Communications<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n Like what you read?\u00a0Subscribe to our newsletter<\/a>\u00a0for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates.<\/p>\n Check us out on\u00a0EarthSnap<\/a>, a free app brought to you by\u00a0Eric Ralls<\/a>\u00a0and Earth.com.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists have found that vitamin B12 can cause worms to develop a meat-eating mouth shape that their offspring…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606098,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[97,269],"class_list":{"0":"post-606097","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nutrition","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-nutrition"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}