Huberman Lab - Essentials: Genes & the Inheritance of Memories Across Generations | Dr. Oded Rechavi

Episode Date: September 10, 2026

In this Huberman Lab Essentials episode, my guest is Dr. Oded Rechavi, a professor at Tel Aviv University who studies genetics, epigenetics and the inheritance of acquired traits. We discuss how DNA, ...RNA and epigenetic mechanisms determine what information can pass between generations, and why acquired traits are generally not thought to be inherited. We also explain research in C. elegans showing how small RNAs can transmit antiviral resistance and influence behavior across generations, what these findings might mean for mammals and humans, and potential future applications for reproductive health and diagnostics. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com/huberman LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Oded Rechavi (00:00:24) DNA, Genome, RNA & Proteins (00:03:43) Somatic vs. Germ Cells; Inheritance (00:06:05) Sponsor: Eight Sleep (00:07:23) Lamarck vs. Darwin, Inheritance of Acquired Traits (00:09:45) Weismann Barrier, Epigenetic Reprogramming (00:13:05) RNA & Transgenerational Inheritance (00:13:54) Model Organisms, C. elegans (00:16:59) Inheritance of Acquired Traits in C. elegans (00:17:14) Sponsor: AG1 (00:18:40) RNA Interference, Small RNAs & Gene Silencing (00:22:46) Viral Resistance Across Generations (00:24:53) Small RNAs, Mammals & Inherited Effects (00:26:00) Brain Activity, Memory & Heritable Information (00:28:46) Neuronal Small RNAs & Behavior Across Generations (00:29:59) Germ Cells, Development & Heritable RNA (00:31:29) Sponsor: LMNT (00:33:11) Future Applications, Exercise, IVF & RNA Diagnostics (00:35:16) Acknowledgements Disclaimer & Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. And now for my discussion with Dr. Oded Raghavi. Odette, thank you so much for being here. Totally, my pleasure. Today, what I mainly want to talk about is the incredible questions that you probe in your lab, are incredibly significant for each and all of our lives. I think most people have a general
Starting point is 00:00:34 understanding of what genes are, what RNA is, and so on. But maybe you could explain to people in very basic terms. And I'll just preface all this by saying that I think most people understand that if they have two blue-eyed parents, that there's a higher probability that their offspring will have blue eyes than brown eyes. But most people generally understand and accept that if they spend part of their life, let's say studying architecture, that if they have children, that there's no real genetic reason, we assume, that their children would somehow be better at architecture because they contain the knowledge through the DNA of their parents. They might be exposed to it in the home, so-called nature nurture.
Starting point is 00:01:17 That's a nurture in that case, but that they wouldn't inherit knowledge. Today, I'm hoping you can explain to us why eye color but not knowledge is thought to be inherited and the huge landscape of interesting questions that this opens up, including some evidence that contrary to what we might think, certain types of knowledge at the level of cells and systems can be inherited. So DNA is the material, the genetic instructions that is containing every one of our cells. We have the set of genes containing the entire set is called the gene. genome, and this is present in every cell of our body, the same set of instructions.
Starting point is 00:01:56 Genes are made of DNA and chromosomes that are containing chromosomes, chromosomes, is the DNA and the proteins that condense the DNA, because we have a huge amount of DNA in every cell that you need to condense it. Sort of like thread on a spool. Right. Huge amounts that you have to condense. And we have the same genome, the same DNA in every cell in our body. It's good to have an analogy to understand how it works.
Starting point is 00:02:19 This is like the IKEA book that you have in every cell in your body, the instructions to make everything that you need in your house, the chairs, the kitchen, the pictures. But in every room you want something else. So in the kitchen you want things that fit the kitchen. And in the toilet, you want things that fit to the toilet. So you only remove one particular page of instructions, which is the instruction of how to build a chair. And this you place it in the living room. And in the toilet you put in the toilet. So the genome is the instruction to make everything.
Starting point is 00:02:48 this is the ICARE book, and in every cell we take just the instructions for make one particular furniture, and this is the RNA. And then at the end, you'll build a chair. The chair is the protein. This is true for one particular type of RNA, which is messenger RNA. In fact, this is just a small percent of the RNA in the cell. So we have a very big genome, and less than 2 percent of it encodes for this messenger RNA. However, a lot of the genome is transcribed, to make RNA that does other things. Some of these RNAs we understand, and many of them we don't.
Starting point is 00:03:24 It's a beautiful description, and IKEA is not a sponsor of the podcast, so it's a totally fair game to use the IKEA catalog as the analogy for DNA, the specific instructions for specific pieces of furniture is the RNA and the furniture pieces being the proteins
Starting point is 00:03:39 that are essentially made from RNA using Messenger RNA. Right. Okay. Despite the fact that the same genes are contained in all the cells of the body, is it fair to say that there's basically one very important exception, which is somatic cells versus germ cells.
Starting point is 00:03:54 And would you mind sharing with us what that distinction is? So yes, every cell type is different. We have cells in the legs. We have cells in the brain. We have cells that produce dopamine, cells that produce serotonin and so on. But we can make one very important distinction between the somatic cells and the germ cells. The germ cells are supposed to be the only cells that contributes to the next generation. out of which the next generation will be made.
Starting point is 00:04:20 So each of us is made just from a combination of a sperm and an egg. These are two types of germ cells. And then they fuse and you get one fertilized egg. And out of this one cell, all the rest of the body will develop. And what happens in the soma, which are all the cells that are not the germ cells, should stay in the soma. Should not be able to contribute to the next generation. This is very important.
Starting point is 00:04:45 and it's sort to be one of the main barriers for the inheritance of acquired traits, the inheritance of memory, and so on. Because, for example, like the example that you gave with learning architecture, if I learn about architecture, the information is encoded in my brain. And since my brain cells can't transfer information to the sperm and the egg, because the information is supposed to reside in synaptic connections between different neurons, in particular circuits that developed. So what happens in the brain shouldn't be able to transfer to the next generation. Even simpler, a simpler example, if you go to the gym and you build up muscles,
Starting point is 00:05:27 you know that your kids will have to work out on their own. This shortout won't happen. This is something that we know intuitively, even if we don't have any background in biology. This is connected to the fact that, as we said at the beginning, Every cell in the body has its own genome and the next generation will only form from the combination of the genomes in the sperm and the egg. Even if you somehow acquire the mutation or change in your DNA in one of particular
Starting point is 00:05:56 brain cells, it wouldn't matter because this mutation, there's no way to transfer it to the DNA of the germ cells that will contribute to the next generation. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, 8 Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. One of the best ways to ensure you get a great night's sleep is to make sure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall asleep and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees.
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Starting point is 00:07:13 Eight Sleep ships to many countries worldwide, including Mexico and the UAE. Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350. There is this idea, and I'll say it so that you don't have to, that dates back to Lamarck and Lamarckian evolution. Very controversial, right? And maybe not even controversial. I think it's very, like, offensive even to certain people. this idea of inheritance of acquired traits, the idea that one could change themselves through some activity, use the example of going to the gym. We could also use the example of somebody who
Starting point is 00:07:44 becomes an endurance runner, then decides to have children within another endurance runner and has in mind the idea that because they did all this running and not just because they were biased towards running in the first place, but because of the distance they actually ran that their offspring somehow would be fabulous runners. This Lamarckian concept is, we, believe wrong. So how do we talk about inheritance of acquired traits? What's the proper language for us to frame this discussion? Lamarck, this is what he believed, and he thought this is how evolution progressed. And later, Darwin showed that it's really natural selection, the selecting of the organisms that already contain the particular qualities are selected based
Starting point is 00:08:30 on whether they survive or not in particular environments, and therefore the evolution progresses, they become more common and take over. This is very different. Two different explanations. The most common way this is contrasted is the neck of the giraffes. This is the classic example. According to Lamarck, the giraffes had to stretch their necks towards the trees to eat when the trees were high. And because of that, they transmitted these traits long necks to their children who also had long necks.
Starting point is 00:08:59 And according to Davin, just a giraffe that happened to be born with the long neck survived because it ate. So it's genetic, heritable materials. I know about genetics, but take over. And the rest of the giraffes that have different heritable materials just die. So this is natural selection versus inheritance of acquired traits. And then we go back to these studies about inheritance of acquired traits. There were also theoretical problems of why this can't happen. Barriers that have to be breached for this to happen.
Starting point is 00:09:30 And you can narrow it down to two main barriers. First barrier, we mentioned it. This is the separation of the soma from the germline. Right, the somatic cells, they can change in response to experience. The sperm and the egg, the so-called germ cells, cannot. That's the idea. Or they are isolated on what happens in the somer. The men who first thought about this barrier is called Wiseman.
Starting point is 00:09:53 August Wiseman, this was in the 19th century. So it is called today the Wiseman barrier. Separation of the soma from the German, only the germline transmitting from the metatine. next generation. And this is also called the second law of biology. So this is very, very fundamental. So natural selection is the first one. This is the second one because it's so important to how our bodies work. The other main barrier, it's called epigenetic reprogramming, which is that we acquired our cells, the genetic material in our cells, acquires all kinds of chemical
Starting point is 00:10:25 changes. But these modifications are largely erased in the transition between generations. So in the germline, in the sperm and the egg, and also in the early embryo, most of them modifications are removed so we can start a blank slate based on the genetic instructions. And this is crucial. Otherwise, according to the theory, it's not clear that it's actually true because in some organisms it doesn't really happen. We will not develop according to the species typical genetic instructions. So to preserve this, we erase all these modifications that start anew. And this is in memos and in humans, this is largely true.
Starting point is 00:11:09 Most of the modifications in the sperm and in the eggs are removed, so about 90% of them. So the idea, if I understand correctly, is that there's some advantage to wiping the slate clean and returning to the original plan. In the context of the IKEA furniture analogy, the instruction book, is the one that's issued to everybody, okay, or every cell, right? Only certain instructions are used for certain cells, say a skin cell or a neuron or a liver cell or any other cell for that matter. Through the course of the lifespan of the organism, those specific instructions are adjusted somewhat.
Starting point is 00:11:47 Okay, so maybe the idea is to take the instruction, but go through and erase all the pen and pencil marks, erase all those additional little modifications that the owner use or introduced to it and return to the original instruction. Because if you want to bring back the instruction book, you want it to have all the potential to make all the furniture. You don't want it to be restricted to the ones that you made in a particular room. So part of the resistance to the idea is based on theoretical grounds because of these barriers and because of the controversies. On the other hand, people really want to believe it because it sorts of gives your life meaning. if you can change your biology
Starting point is 00:12:29 through changing of your kids through changing your biology. Psychologically, I can understand why many people want this to happen. Even Schredinger, the famous physicist, so he wrote a very important book in 44. And he talked about inheritable material and also talks about evolution
Starting point is 00:12:46 and he said, inheritance of acquired trait is untenable, it doesn't happen. And he writes, this is very, very sad or unfortunate because unlike Darwinism more natural selection, which is gloomy, doesn't matter what you do, the next generation will be born based on the instruction in the sperm and the egg.
Starting point is 00:13:04 It doesn't, you can't influence it. Of course, you can give your kids money and education, but you can't biologically influence it. However, there's one additional thing to mention, which is there are also other mechanisms that might transmit information, including transmission between generations of RNA. And there are different types of RNA, not just messenger RNA, which, in course, and there are different types of RNA, not just messenger RNA which encodes for the information for making protein, but also other RNAs that regulate gene expression.
Starting point is 00:13:32 And I think that in recent years, also in the mammalian field, RNA as the molecule that has the potential to transmit information between generations, took center stage. So I think this is the cutting edge. A lot more to understand the know, but RNA has a lot of potential for doing that, as we'll explain soon, but we have to go to worms first. Many, if not, most of our listeners are focused on humans and human biology and health, et cetera, but I cannot emphasize enough the importance of model organisms and the incredible degree to which they've informed us about human health, especially when it comes to very basic
Starting point is 00:14:09 functions in cells. Before we start to go into the description about worms per se, could you just explain to a general audience what a model organism is and why you've, you've, selected or elected to work on a particular type of worm to study these fascinating topics that there's zero question also take place in humans at some level. Model organisms mean that it's an organism. There's a huge community of researchers that combine sources to create all the resources and the tools and understanding that accumulates. We learned about every aspect of biology through them, including many important diseases. And the reason that we can learn a lot also about humans by studying these animals is that we all evolve from
Starting point is 00:14:56 the same ancestor. We share a lot of our functions with them and also a lot of our genes. They sometimes have things that are much more apparent in them that we can study. Another important reason to study them, of course, is you can actually experiment on them. We can't do this to humans, the things that we do to these animals, and we can change their genes, do all kinds of things for them. The community of people that study C.L. against has literally numbered and named each neuron so that two laboratories on opposite sides of the world can publish papers on the same neuron, knowing that it's the same neuron in the two different laboratories, something that is extremely hard to do in any mammalian model, a mouse or certainly in humans,
Starting point is 00:15:37 and has posed huge challenges that give great advantages to studies of things like C. Eiligants' nematoth always says 959 cells, out of which 302 are neurons. We have a methamphetamine, a connectome since the 80s, like a subway map that tells us which neuron talks with which other neurons. And it is the same. Not only that, the worms are transparent. So we can actually see the neurons fire using particular tools. And we can activate genes and silo genes using optogenetics. On top of that, we have great understanding of the genetics of the one, of the genome. This is, Syllagance is the first animal to have its sequence. it's genome sequenced before humans.
Starting point is 00:16:23 And we know that each worm produces, each mother produces about 250 babies, which are almost genetically identical. And we know where we grow them. The environment is very controlled. So we grow them in the plate with just bacteria. So we can easily separate between nature and nurture. The generation time in C. Eilicants is three days, three days.
Starting point is 00:16:44 So you can do hundreds of warren generations in one PhD. This is very important. Not only that, every worm will produce hundreds of progeny, so you will have, that are genetically identical, so you will have great statistics for your experiments. In the worm, we now have very obvious and clear-cut proof that there is inheritance of acquired traits, so much so that I don't think that anyone pretty much in the epigenetic field argues against it. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 just launched their newest formulation called AG1 Pro.
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Starting point is 00:18:31 What was the first experiment that you did on CLEGINS that confirmed for you that inheritance of acquired traits is real? We set to test whether worms can produce transgenerational resistance to viruses. These worms don't have dedicated immune cells like we do. They don't have T cells or B cells. They defend themselves from viruses using RNA that destroy viruses. And these are called small RNAs. 2006, two researchers that were studying C.
Starting point is 00:19:03 elegance, Andrew Fier and Craig Mello, got the Nobel tries for showing that there is a mechanism that regulate genes that happens through small RNAs. What they've shown is that if you inject the warns with RNA molecules, which are double-stranded, they shut off the genes that match in sequence to this RNA. So it's sort of like taking the specific instructions for the coffee table from your IKEA handbook and you insert a copy of that into the book. And in doing so, you prevent the expression of, you sort of erase the original page. Perfect explanation. They found that double-stranded RNA, RNA that was two strands, is what
Starting point is 00:19:50 starts the response leading to the production of small RNA molecules, which are the ones that actually find the messenger RNA and leads to its destruction. Silence it so you don't get proteins in the end. For that they got the Nobel Prize after people found that this is conserved in many organisms, including humans, and now there are now drugs. This was only in 2006, the Nobel Prize. The paper was published in 98. There are now drugs. that use this mechanism, it is called RNA interference. RNA interferes in the expression of a gene in the function of a gene. And it's also called gene silencing because these RNAs enforce the silencing of genes
Starting point is 00:20:29 instead of the genes being expressed. They are silenced and you don't manifest the function. They've shown two very important things. You don't only see the action in the cell that you injected or in the tissue that you injected, but you see it all over the worms. body. It spreads. This includes also the germs cells. So if you inject the double strain RNA just to somatic cells, even to the head, you will get also the effect in the germ cells and in the next generation. Later they've shown that you can just
Starting point is 00:21:02 take worms and feed them on bacteria that produce this double strength RNA and that the double strength and the silencing would move from the site of ingestion from the gut, where the bacteria are eaten to the rest of the body and also to the next generation. And this is not controversial at all. This is being done routinely every day by any CLEGANs biologist in the world. This has been replicated a million times.
Starting point is 00:21:29 When I started my work, I wanted to see whether in addition to artificial double-stranded RNA, some natural traits can also transmit across generations because of RNA, because of small RNAs. Right, because injecting RNAI, their, shorter interfering RNAs, that is, or putting worms into an environment with an abundance of inhibitory RNAs as an experiment is very different than worms experiencing something
Starting point is 00:21:58 and then passing on that acquired trait to their offspring. It's a world apart, in my opinion, because one is an extreme manipulation that illustrates an underlying principle. The other is something that in theory occurs in the passage of generations just naturally. We're going from the less artificial to the more artificial. The advantages, just like with model organisms, the more artificiality is the easy to, you know exactly what you did.
Starting point is 00:22:23 Just now introduce one factor and you can follow the result. So this is always the traits. In fact, this is probably the reason that these smaller RNAs evolved in the first place. To get rid of viruses and other parasitic genomic elements, and this is a mechanism to fight them. We demonstrated this very clearly using a fluorescent virus. If the virus replicate successfully, the worms just turns green. And if the virus is destroyed, the worm stays black.
Starting point is 00:22:55 This is very simple. It's a clear cutoff. We took worms. We infect them with the fluorescent virus. They destroyed. This also has been done in the test. But then what we did is we neutralized the machinery that makes small RNAs in the descendants of the worms. So they cannot make smaller RNAs from the start on their own
Starting point is 00:23:17 because they just don't have the genes that you need to make this smallerness. And then we ask, what will happen will we affect these worms with the values? Will they be green or black? They can't make their own small RNAs, so they can't protect themselves on their own. The only way for them to stay black, for them not having the virus replicate, is if they inherit the smallerness from their pets. And this is exactly what happens. happens. All the worms progeny, although they don't have the gene that is needed for making
Starting point is 00:23:45 the small RNAs, are black. They silence the valves. And this also continues for additional generations. So the parent worms effectively put something into the genetic instructions of the offspring that would afford them, let's call it an advantage in this case, but afford them an advantage if they were to be confronted with the same thing that the parents were. Right. And we know exactly what this advantage is. The advantages are small RNAs that match the viral genome. Then just chop up the virus in the next generation. And we can identify these small RNAs in the inhibitory RNAs, in the descendants,
Starting point is 00:24:25 although they don't have the machinery to make it, just because they inherited. We can identify them by sequencing. RNA sequencing, which is like DNA sequencing, you actually get the actual sequence of the RNA molecules. And we can see that they correspond to the virus, and they have, they inherit this small, RNAs, only if their parents were infected with them. It is true that also in memos, RNAs and small RNAs are a lending candidate for something that could mediate the transmission of stress protection or also of harmful effects that transmit between generations.
Starting point is 00:24:58 Perhaps RNA do it. And it's very interesting to think about it when we talk about inheritance of memories. Can brain activity of some sort transmit, at least in these words? I said, no, I said this disclaimer multiple times in members we don't know, times will tell. In worms, we know a lot. So can worms transmit brain activity to do they have the specificity to do? I think that any tissues that transmit RNA to the next generation and affect the next generation is interesting. The gut, muscles, everything.
Starting point is 00:25:29 But the brain can synthesize information about the environment and about internal states and can also think ahead. And the most provocative thing you can say is that you could plan how somehow the fate of your nation using your brain, after taking many things into the code. Without talking to them. Right, without talking.
Starting point is 00:25:50 Again, we go back to this instruction manual. It's like writing something into the instruction manual based on your own experience. Right. We have to understand that the brain uses a different language than the language of inheritance. It keeps information in,
Starting point is 00:26:04 in synapses, in the connections between different neurons. When you learn something, you make some connections stronger and some other connections weaker. And you wire the nervous system in a different way. On the other hand, heritable information of any sort has to go through a bottleneck of one cell, the fertilized egg, because we all start from just one cell. So the question is, can you or do you
Starting point is 00:26:29 translate the information, this free-d-structure information of synapses and the connection, and the connection between brains in the architecture of the brain, can you somehow translate it to heritable information to a molecular form? You can teach worms. Even though they have just 3002 neurons, you can teach them simple things about the world. For example, you can take an odor that the worms like.
Starting point is 00:26:49 The worms have thousands of odorant receptors, and they can recognize many, many, many molecules. They can smell them so they can find food or avoid enemies. You can take an odor that the worms like and pair it to something bad, like starvation. and then the worms we learn to dislike this odor. We don't know that this learning involves necessarily changing in the strength of synapses.
Starting point is 00:27:14 It's a possibility, but it doesn't have to be the case. It could be that just the receptor for this particular odor is being removed. And this is how they live. Now they won't have the receptor. They won't smell. They won't like the odor. This is a possibility.
Starting point is 00:27:29 This type of thing, you can perhaps, not that anyone has showed it convincingly, transmit to the next generation because all it would take is an RNA that will control this particular receptor. People have shown things like that, not in C-Elegance, but people have shown things like this in mammals. They said that you learn certain things and then just in the next generation, that's a particular receptor would be methylated or would change, and this would transmit the response. And on the one hand, it could be true. On the other hand, you know, you know, you would be a particular hand, you need to understand they'll need to prove, and this wasn't done convincingly enough
Starting point is 00:28:08 yet, how exactly does the information transfer from the brain to the germ cells and then in the next generation from the germ cells back to the brain to where the receptor need to operate. And this is a challenge. This is the current state of the field that this is something that needs to be proven. What we didn't see elegance is we showed that the brain can communicate with the next generations using smaller arrays. and the disk can change behavior. And it doesn't require any translating between any language.
Starting point is 00:28:37 It is very simple. What we've shown is that if you take a worm and you change the production of small RNAs just in its brain, in the next generations, their behavior will be different, even though you don't mess with their brains. This is a paper that we published in 2019 in cell. We show that you just manipulate the production of endogenous natural RNAs in the worms, brain that are always made, but you change their amount. And this changes the capacity of the worms in the next generation to find food, not only in one generation, but three generations down the road.
Starting point is 00:29:13 And the way that it works is that pertubing the production of these small RNAs in the brain affects in the end the expression of a gene in the germline. One gene is called Sage 2. We can do all kinds of controls where we manipulate the activity of the gene and see that this also affects behavior. And this gene works in the germ cells. The information needs to go from the brain to the germ cells. It doesn't need to go back from the germ cells to the brain to affect behavior.
Starting point is 00:29:42 And this depends. We know that this is a true epigenetic effect because it goes on for multiple generations. And also because it requires the machinery that transfers RNA between generations. If you don't have the protein that physically carries the RNA between generation, it doesn't happen. So it has to be RNA. It has to be RNA. We can also find the RNAs in the next generation that change.
Starting point is 00:30:03 We sequence the actual RNAs that change in the next generation. So it sounds weird that you change germ cells and it changes behavior, speraminate. But if you think about it, the germ cells affect the soma, including the brain in many ways by secreting certain chemicals. And also because the other cells developed from the germ cells. So some information could be transmitted over development or the course of development. could be altered because of changes that occur in the germ cells. For example, in Memels, one of the explanations for how heritable information transmits
Starting point is 00:30:39 is that it just affects something very own in development. I told you that the secrets to Worm's inheritance is that they have the capacity to amplify these small RNAs all the time. This is what keeps it going and prevents the dilution. In Memels, we don't know of such an amplification mechanism. So you ask, how can a little bit of RNA or something, without amplifying, affect then the entire organism. And it could be that you just perturb something in the very beginning,
Starting point is 00:31:08 when you just have a few cells, or even in the placenta that develops in pregnancy, and this later throws everything off. And because of that, you have many problems, metabolism and so on. And this is called the idea of the developmental origin of health and disease. Many of the things occur, many of the functions occur early on in development. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct amounts, but no sugar.
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Starting point is 00:32:09 I dissolve one packet of element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I first wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I'll also drink element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes. Element has a bunch of great tasting flavors. I love the raspberry. I love the citrus flavor.
Starting point is 00:32:30 Right now, Element has a limited edition lemonade flavor that is absolutely delicious. I hate to say that I love one more than all the others, but this lemonade flavor is right up there with my favorite other one, which is raspberry or watermelon. Again, I can't pick just one flavor. I love them all. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to DrinkElement.com slash Huberman, spell drinklmnT.com slash Huberman, to claim a free element sample pack with a purchase of any. element drink mix. Again, that's drink element.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. In terms of the work in either C. elegans or in other model organisms, but in particular
Starting point is 00:33:06 in C. elegans, where do you see this going next? So assuming that we will discover similar things in humans, which we don't know that this is the case, but let's say we find it. I think there are many things you can do before you change it. You could also change a apparent inheritance, by having the parent exercise, for example. Some things like this have been done. For example, there are experiments in rodents where they show that overfeeding the rodents creates problems for the next generation,
Starting point is 00:33:40 for the children. However, if you let the rodent exercise, then it corrects their parent-in-hert. So this is one possibility, and you can also manipulate it at the source. You can change if it's RNAs, say you could in the future, perhaps if we understand how it works, actually change the composition of the heritable RNAs.
Starting point is 00:34:00 If you do IVS, if you do vital fertilization, you can perhaps change the composition of the RNAs in the stuff that you introduce. But way before that, what you could do, perhaps even in the not so far future is use this for diagnostics. DNA-based diagnostics for every couple that wants to have a kid. In Israel, this is done for most couples. you can look at the DNA and look for genetic disease. But no one is looking at the RNA at the moment.
Starting point is 00:34:30 If we understand how it works better, we'll have another level, a whole new world, to look at. And perhaps there will be some RNAs that correlate with disease. The beauty is that this unlike DNA, it's plastic. So with DNA, this is your DNA. Perhaps we can choose another embryo. But here you could say, perhaps, or again, in the future, this is science fiction, doesn't happen now.
Starting point is 00:34:49 But if we understand this and it's true, we can say maybe you should run, on the treadmill a little bit, this will change the profile of your RNAs, and then we will use it for IVF. This seems more because just it correlates with healthy profiles of RNAs. This is a level that no one looks at now and holds great potential. Again, with a disclaimer that we don't know how it works in humans at all. Yes. Yes. But of course, this is why so interesting. Today, you've taken us on an amazing journey through the genome, RNA, in particular, the work in your laboratory, which is just incredible and also this introduction of model organisms. So thank you so much.
Starting point is 00:35:29 Thank you. It's been a real pleasure. Pleasure was all mine. Thanks a lot.

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