Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP), University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z5, Canada.
Annu Rev Public Health. 2010;31:329-47 3p following 347. doi: 10.1146/annurev.publhealth.012809.103538.
Social environments and experiences get under the skin early in life in ways that affect the course of human development. Because most factors associated with early child development are a function of socio-economic status, differences in early child development form a socio-economic gradient. We are now learning how, when, and by what means early experiences influence key biological systems over the long term to produce gradients: a process known as biological embedding. Opportunities for biological embedding are tethered closely to sensitive periods in the development of neural circuitry. Epigenetic regulation is the best example of operating principles relevant to biological embedding. We are now in a position to ask how early childhood environments work together with genetic variation and epigenetic regulation to generate socially partitioned developmental trajectories with impact on health across the life course.
社会环境和经历在生命早期就以影响人类发展进程的方式影响着人体。由于与儿童早期发展相关的大多数因素都是社会经济地位的函数，因此儿童早期发展的差异形成了社会经济梯度。我们现在逐渐了解到，早期经历是如何以及通过何种方式在长期内影响关键的生物系统，从而产生梯度的：这个过程被称为生物嵌入。生物嵌入的机会与神经回路发育的敏感时期密切相关。表观遗传调控是与生物嵌入相关的作用原理的最佳范例。我们现在能够提出这样的问题：儿童早期环境如何与遗传变异和表观遗传调控相互作用，从而产生具有终生健康影响的社会分割发展轨迹。
