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Horizontal and vertical transmission of transgenerational memories via the Cer1 transposon

Animals face both external and internal dangers: pathogens threaten from the environment, and unstable genomic elements threaten from within. Previously, we discovered that C. elegans protects itself from pathogens by “reading” bacterial small RNAs and using this information to both induce avoidance and transmit memories for several generations. Here we found that these memories can be transferred to naïve animals via Cer1 retrotransposon-encoded capsids. Cer1 functions at the step of transmission of information from the germline to neurons, and is required for C. elegans’ learned avoidance ability and for mothers to pass this information on to progeny. The presence of the Cer1 retrotransposon in wild C. elegans strains correlates with the ability to learn and inherit small RNA-induced pathogen avoidance. Together, these results suggest that C. elegans has co-opted a potentially dangerous retrotransposon to instead protect itself and its progeny from a common pathogen through its inter-tissue signaling ability, hijacking this genomic element for its own adaptive immunity benefit.