Epigenetics and behaviour articles from across Nature Portfolio

Reporting in Cell, two groups now show that parental responses to the environment are passed to their offspring by small RNAs.

In 2004, Weaver et al. published evidence in Nature Neuroscience for the lasting epigenetic impact of maternal care within the hippocampus of rat offspring. This conceptual and methodological leap contributed to the evolution of environmental and behavioral epigenetics and continues to inspire challenging questions about genes, environments, and their legacy.

Neurons require lifelong maintenance of their transcriptional program, which includes stable expression of cell-type-specific identity genes. A study now shows that PRC2-mediated chromatin repression in adulthood is critical for the maintenance of neuronal identity gene expression and neuronal survival.

Endocrine disruptors are critical environmental exposures that influence health and can promote epigenetic transgenerational inheritance of disease and abnormal physiology. Advances in 2015 included analyses of the effects of endocrine disruptors on human disease, further examples of endocrine disruptors promoting transgenerational behavioural effects, insights into effects of endocrine disruptors on epigenetic programming of primordial germ cells and the finding that endocrine disruptors can transgenerationally promote genetic mutations.