I recently learned about epigenetics and it's
mind blowing.
In a nutshell: the expression of a gene within an individual can change over their lives, and the changes can be inherited. There are multiple mechanisms of alteration and inheritance.
The field is still in very early stages of research, but here are some paraphrases from Wikipedia to hook you:
* Children born during the Dutch famine of 1944–45 were smaller than those born the year before the famine and the effects could last for two generations. They also were at increased risk of glucose intolerance in adulthood.
* Children of women who were abused during pregnancy were significantly more likely than others to have methylated glucocorticoid-receptor genes, which in turn change the response to stress, leading to a higher susceptibility to anxiety
* Male mice that participated in voluntary physical exercise resulted in offspring that had reduced fear memory and anxiety-like behavior in response to stress.
For further reading:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenerational_epigenetic_i...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics_of_anxiety_and_str...
--- Pure conjecture ---
As an engineer, this sounds like coarse short-term evolution; a dimmer switch for various genetic functions which can improve offspring fitness relative to a sudden environmental change, possibly with negative side effects, until the environment stabilizes or genetics can adapt with new functionality.
Only now, our population is mixing over broad geographic areas subject to an unprecedented acceleration of environmental changes, with often no prior genetic training, as cultures shift towards sedentary, inside, less-social lifestyles that have fewer children at greater ages.
An inter-generational epigenetic analysis of celiac, autoimmune, and other "new" diseases could be ground breaking. I'm wondering to what degree they are emergent symptoms of possibly conflicting epigenetic adaptations accumulated over multiple generations. The timing is just so suspicious.
The mouse study of stress tolerance also suggests follow-up studies that may have fascinating political ramifications.