Background
What is Epigenetics?
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) describes epigenetics, how it works, how it can change, and how it can affect your health.
Epigenetics and Child Development: How Children’s Experiences Affect Their Genes
The Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University infographic and explanation of epigenetics.
ACEs and Epigenetics: The Story Told Through Our Genes
This White Paper from Iowa ACEs 360 describes epigenetics and ACEs in Iowa.
Brain on Stress: How the Social Environment Gets Under the Skin, 2012
An overview emphasizing the interplay between cumulative wear and tear (allostatic load/overload) facilitated by the same mediators that are essential for adaptation and survival.
[McEwen, B.S. (2012). Brain on stress: how the social environment gets under the skin. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(Supplement 2), 17180-17185. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00406-005-0624-4]
Epigenetics and Child Abuse: Modern-day Darwinism — The Miraculous Ability of the Human Genome to Adapt, and Then Adapt Again, 2015
This is a review of a growing body of literature implicating ACEs in a broad range of negative health consequences.
[Gershon, N.B., & High, P.C. (2015). Epigenetics and child abuse: Modern‐day darwinism—The miraculous ability of the human genome to adapt, and then adapt again. American Journal of Medical Genetics Part C: Seminars in Medical Genetics, 169(4), https://doi.org/10.1002/ajmg.c.31467]
Holocaust Exposure Induced Intergenerational Effects on FKBP5 Methylation, 2015
The children of traumatized people have long been known to be at increased risk for posttraumatic stress disorder, and mood and anxiety disorders. However, according to researchers, there are very few opportunities to examine biologic alterations and epigenetic effects of trauma in exposed people and their adult children born after the event. This is the first demonstration of an association of preconception parental trauma with epigenetic alterations that is evident in both exposed parent and offspring, providing potential insight into how severe psychophysiological trauma can have intergenerational effects.
[Yehuda, R., Daskalakis, N.P., Bierer, L.M., Bader, H.N., Klengel, T., Holsboer, F., & Binder, E.B. (2015). Holocaust exposure induced intergenerational effects on FKBP5 methylation. Biological Psychiatry 80(5), 372-380. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2015.08.005]