Lucky grandchildren: Inbred mice whose grandparents developed liver fibrosis appear to be protected against the same disease

Background: Epigenetic mechanisms might modify the fibrogenic response to liver injury. Recently a history of CCl4-induced liver damage was shown to result in an epigenetic suppressive adaptation of the wound healing response in male F2 rats (Zeybel et al. Nat Med 2012). Our aim now was to investigate whether ancestral liver injury leads to mutligenerational reprogramming of the fibrotic response in inbred mouse strains. Methods: To address this question we designed an experiment in which male mice from the BALB/cJ inbred strain were treated with CCl4 intraperitoneally for six weeks to induce liver fibrosis. The…