Small non-coding RNAs (sncRNAs) are potential vectors at the interface between genes and environment. We found that traumatic stress in early life altered mouse microRNA (miRNA) expression, and behavioral and metabolic responses in the progeny. Injection of sperm RNAs from traumatized males into fertilized wild-type oocytes reproduced the behavioral and metabolic alterations in the resulting offspring.We thank M. Rassoulzadegan and V. Grandjean for help with the sperm
purification, F. Manuella and H. Hörster for assistance with the MSUS paradigm,
H. Welzl for help with behavior, G. Vernaz for help with western blotting,
R. Tweedie-Cullen and P. Nanni for help with mass spectrometry, A. Patrignani
for advice on DNA and RNA quality assessment, and A. Chen and A. Brunner for
constructive discussions. This work was supported by the Austrian Academy of
Sciences, the University of Zürich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology,
Roche, the Swiss National Science Foundation, and The National Center of
Competence in Research “Neural Plasticity and Repair”. P.S. was supported by a
Gonville and Caius College fellowship.This is the accepted manuscript. The final version is available in Nature Neuroscience 17, 667–669 (2014), doi:10.1038/nn.369
