This is a dense academic paper which very interestingly highlights the debate between nature and nurture. The paper presents recent research and puts the debate into a different perspective where genes and environment go hand in hand. The paper emphasises the importance of the environment and how it affects the structure and expression of the genes and almost poetically concludes “When I learned that real-life subjective experiences could regulate gene transcription, it changed the way I understood myself. I was not just an immutable collection of transcribed genes. My genes had my experiences of early care, my traumas and dramas and education written onto them in the tiniest molecular inscription of the histone code and DNA methylations. Furthermore, even as I was born, the most salient facts of my parents’ and even their parents’ lives—the kinds of care they had received, their education, their sense of safety or fear—was etched into my genes too, to help me adapt to what was biologically anticipated to be a similar environment”
Epigenetics:the-dogma defying discovery that genes learn from experience
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