And thanks to a study published this week in the journal Cell Metabolism, we now know that sperm carries not just genetic information, but epigenetic information as well.

由于本周发表在《细胞代谢》杂志上的一项研究，我们现在知道精子不仅携带遗传信息， 还携带表观遗传信息。

But even though each cell gets a complete copy of that genome, it only needs to use certain parts -- and it figures out which parts based on your epigenetic information.

但是， 即使每个细胞都获得了该基因组的完整副本， 它也只需要使用某些部分—— 它会根据你的表观遗传信息找出哪些部分。

We also know that they’re inherited, but for a long time, geneticists thought that sperm cells were too small to contain both the genome AND the epigenetic information of the donor.

我们也知道它们是遗传的， 但很长一段时间以来，遗传学家认为精子细胞太小而无法包含供体的基因组和表观遗传信息。