Maternal, Infant and Child Health

Genetics, Epigenetics and the formative starting points of Grown-up Wellbeing

A person inherits a complete set of genes from each parent, as well as a vast array of cultural and socioeconomic experiences from his/her family. Family history is thought to be a good predictor of an individual’s disease risk because family members most closely represent the unique genomic and environmental interactions that an individual experiences

Epigenetics is the study of heritable phenotype changes that do not involve alterations in the DNA sequence. The Greek prefix epi in epigenetics implies features that are "on top of" or "in addition to" the traditional genetic basis for inheritance. Epigenetics most often denotes changes that affect gene activity and expression, but can also be used to describe any heritable phenotypic change.