Epigenetic Embedding of Early Life Experiences – How Environments Get “Under the Skin

Epigenetics is emerging as an important interface between environments and the genome. Further, epigenetics has become an attractive component of the developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD) concept. In human populations, the most studied epigenetic modification is DNA methylation. This presentation will draw on several multidisciplinary human population studies that use a “society to cell” paradigm to illustrate how diverse early life experiences and environments can become embedded into our genome by way of DNA methylation. The range of epigenetic associations to be discussed focuses on social and physical environments and includes prenatal alcohol exposure, early life socio-economic status, family adversity and child abuse. The DNA methylation patterns sculpted early in development can be measured in some cases many years later, in different tissues, and across different human populations. Machine learning approaches can be used to derive from these population-based associations DNA methylation predictors at the level of an individual person. Glancing into the future of forensic applications, the potential to reconstruct an individual’s “social history” in this way will be discussed in the context of forensic epigenetic fingerprinting.