Paternal bloodlines sculpting seminal concepts: circulating factors as mediators of transgenerational 'epigenopathy' and 'epigenetic resilience'.

Accumulating evidence, particularly from rodent and human studies, shows that the environmental exposures and experience of a father prior to conception can modulate sperm epigenetics and subsequent offspring phenotypes. In this issue of The EMBO Journal, van Steenwyk and colleagues (2020) provide important new insights into how one form of paternal experience (early-life stress or trauma) may impact sperm epigenetics via circulating factors, presenting novel experimental evidence from a mouse model and an analogous human cohort.