Paige Lawrence, who runs a lab in
the environmental medicine department at the University of Rochester, said the
results of the study, published this month in the journal iScience, could help
explain why some people are more vulnerable to the flu than others.
The project started with mice.
“We got mice, we let them get pregnant, and
while they were pregnant, we exposed them to very teeny tiny amounts of dioxins
-- one part per billion,” Lawrence said.
Dioxins are a type of pollution
that is toxic to both people and mice. Their negative effects on immune systems
are well-documented.
What has been less clear is
whether those effects can be inherited.
To study that connection, the
researchers also had a set of mice that they did not expose to dioxins. They
tracked both groups for three generations -- until they had what Lawrence
called, “the mouse equivalent of great-grandchildren.”
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