Lysosomal activation leaves a lasting memory.

Beyond their degradative role, lysosomes help prepare Caenorhabditis elegans offspring for stress. In a recent study, Zhang et al. show that lysosomal activation induces somatic histone H3.3 production, which moves to the germline and is methylated at K79 to transmit longevity. Thus, this work establishes lysosomes as a conduit linking metabolism, chromatin, and epigenetic inheritance.