Epigenetic Inheritance and the Environment

There are many experimental and field studies today showing that changes in toxicological, nutritional, climatic and mental conditions may have, and often do have, long-term, heritable effects in living organisms. Although the heritability of these environmentally induced effects is variable, there is no doubt that living organisms are not born developmental blank slates. In this chapter I discuss the inheritance of the effects of environmentally induced chemical and mental stresses focusing on two recent experiments in mice. The first shows the heritable effects of toxic chemicals that disrupt hormonal pathways (Endocrine Disruptor Chemicals, EDCs), and the second shows the heritable effect of psychological trauma following unpredictable separation from the mother. After clarifying the notion of epigenetics and epigenetic inheritance, I describe the epigenetic mechanisms underlying these and other environmentally induced heritable effects. The paper ends with a discussion of between-generation inheritance of environmentally induced effects in humans and the potential problems and possibilities that currently developing technologies and life-styles, including AI, open up.