Boyce W Thomas, Kobor Michael S
Departments of Pediatrics and Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco, USA; Child and Brain Development Program, Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Canada.
Dev Sci. 2015 Jan;18(1):1-23. doi: 10.1111/desc.12282.
This paper argues that there is a revolution afoot in the developmental science of gene-environment interplay. We summarize, for an audience of developmental researchers and clinicians, how epigenetic processes - chromatin structural modifications that regulate gene expression without changing DNA sequences - may offer a strong, parsimonious account for the convergence of genetic and contextual variation in the genesis of adaptive and maladaptive development. Epigenetic processes may play a plausible explanatory role in understanding: divergent trajectories and sexual dimorphisms in brain development; statistical interactions between genes and environments; the biological embedding of early psychosocial adversities; the linkages of such adversities to disorders of mental health; the striking individual variation in the strength of those linkages; the molecular origins of critical and sensitive periods; and the transgenerational inheritance of risk and protection. Taken together, these arguments converge in a claim that epigenetic processes constitute a promising and illuminating point of connection - a 'synapse' - between genes and environments.
本文认为，基因与环境相互作用的发育科学正在经历一场变革。我们向发育研究人员和临床医生群体总结了表观遗传过程——即调节基因表达而不改变DNA序列的染色质结构修饰——如何能够为适应性和适应不良发育起源中遗传变异与环境变异的趋同提供一个有力且简洁的解释。表观遗传过程可能在理解以下方面发挥合理的解释作用：大脑发育中的不同轨迹和性别差异；基因与环境之间的统计相互作用；早期心理社会逆境的生物学嵌入；此类逆境与心理健康障碍的联系；这些联系强度上显著的个体差异；关键期和敏感期的分子起源；以及风险和保护的跨代遗传。综上所述，这些观点汇聚成一个主张，即表观遗传过程构成了基因与环境之间一个有前景且具启发性的连接点——一个“突触”。
