PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Noa Liberman
AU  - Maxim V. Gerashchenko
AU  - Konstantinos Boulias
AU  - Fiona G MacWhinnie
AU  - Albert Kejun Ying
AU  - Anya Flood Taylor
AU  - Joseph Al Haddad
AU  - Hiroki Shibuya
AU  - Lara Roach
AU  - Anna Dong
AU  - Vadim N. Gladyshev
AU  - Eric Lieberman Greer
TI  - Intergenerational hormesis is regulated by heritable 18S rRNA methylation
AID  - 10.1101/2021.09.27.461965
DP  - 2021 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2021.09.27.461965
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/09/27/2021.09.27.461965.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/09/27/2021.09.27.461965.full
AB  - Heritable non-genetic information can regulate a variety of complex phenotypes. However, what specific non-genetic cues are transmitted from parents to their descendants are poorly understood. Here, we perform metabolic methyl-labelling experiments to track the heritable transmission of methylation from ancestors to their descendants in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. We find that methylation is transmitted to descendants in proteins, RNA, DNA and lipids. We further find that in response to parental starvation, fed naïve progeny display reduced fertility, increased heat stress resistance, and extended longevity. This intergenerational hormesis is accompanied by a heritable increase in N6’-dimethyl adenosine (m6,2A) on the 18S ribosomal RNA at adenosines 1735 and 1736. We identified the conserved DIMT-1 as the m6,2A methyltransferase in C. elegans and find that dimt-1 is required for the intergenerational hormesis phenotypes. This study provides the first labeling and tracking of heritable non-genetic material across generations and demonstrates the importance of rRNA methylation for regulating the heritable response to starvation.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.