This 2018 Italian human cell study conducted a series of experiments on the effects of nutrient deprivation:

“Reduced food intake, and in particular protein or amino acid (AA) restriction, extends lifespan and healthspan.

We have previously shown that, in mammalian cells, deprivation of essential AAs (methionine/cysteine or tyrosine) leads to the transcriptional reactivation of integrated silenced transgenes by a process involving epigenetic chromatic remodeling and histone acetylation.

Here we show that the deprivation of methionine/cysteine also leads to the transcriptional upregulation of endogenous retroviruses [ERVs], suggesting that essential AA starvation affects the expression not only of exogenous non-native DNA sequences, but also of endogenous anciently-integrated and silenced parasitic elements of the genome.

ERVs, comprising 8% of the human genome, represent the remnants of past infections of germ cells by exogenous retroviruses, and are mostly unable to retrotranspose in the human genome. However, they can reactivate during physiological development, or in pathological conditions like cancer, and regulate the expression of nearby genes by their LTR elements, leading to general transcriptional reprogramming.

Dissection of the underlying mechanism ruled out a role for the main AA-deficiency sensor GCN2 and pointed to the ribosome as the possible master controller.”

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0200783 “Amino acid deprivation triggers a novel GCN2-independent response leading to the transcriptional reactivation of non-native DNA sequences”

The study found that reality is sometimes stranger than what fiction writers dream up. 🙂

The authors cited a 2016 Danish review I hadn’t previously curated:

https://www.nature.com/articles/nrendo.2016.87 “The role of diet and exercise in the transgenerational epigenetic landscape of T2DM” (not freely available)

Contrary to what’s implied by its title, though, and as I noted in How to hijack science: Ignore its intent and focus on the 0.0001%, those reviewers didn’t cite any human studies that adequately demonstrated transgenerational epigenetic inheritance causes and effects. They admitted:

“Direct evidence that epigenetic factors drive the inheritance of T2DM [type 2 diabetes mellitus] in humans is lacking.”

The Danish reviewers then continued on as if proof of human transgenerational epigenetic inheritance was a foregone conclusion! It didn’t serve any valid scientific purpose to assume such evidence into existence.