Student no. 11722219 Page | 1
Can The Environment In Which Our Long-Deceased Ancestors Lived Still Affect Our Mental And Physical Health? In this essay, I will explain what epigenetics refers to and how the concept came about. Proceeding, I will outline a number of studies and observations from recent years which suggest that epigenetics play a role in transgenerational adaptation, and that the implicated epigenetic alterations are correlated with environmental changes – both physical and mental. Finally, I will conclude that the environment in which our long-deceased ancestors lived does appear to be capable of having an effect on our mental and physical health, but that more research is needed if we are to understand this phenomenon in a more wholesome way – and, that such research will become more and more possible now that we know what we are looking for.
Kaati et al. (2007) explain how “epigenetics refers to heritable changes in gene function that cannot be explained by changes in DNA sequence” (Kaati et al., 2007, p.785). One of the first allusions to this sort of phenomenon came from Marcus Pembrey, who carried out some important research on the mechanisms underlying the inheritance of Angelman syndrome, which subsequently “helped elucidate the normal phenomenon of genomic imprinting in humans” (Pembrey, 2010, p.268). Pembrey found that the specific alteration of the DNA sequence associated with Angelman syndrome did not always necessitate the onset of the condition, but rather the alleles of the gene could be “active or silent depending on which parent they came from” (Pembrey, 2010, p.268). As such, the inheritance of Angelman syndrome was shown to not only rely on alterations of the DNA sequence of a specific gene; but also upon a force which “determines whether the gene is silenced or active in the next generation” (Pembrey, 2010, p.268).