How The Genome Got a Life Span

Biocultural psychopathology as a new epistemology for mental disorders

Psychopathology has been criticized for decades for its reliance on a brain-centred and over-reductionist approach which views mental disorders as disease-like natural kinds. While criticisms of brain-centred psychopathologies abound, these criticisms sometimes ignore important advances in the neurosciences which view the brain as embodied, embedded, extended and enactive, and as fundamentally plastic. A new onto-epistemology for mental disorders is proposed, focusing on a biocultural model, in which human brains are understood as embodied and embedded in ecosocial niches, and with which individuals enact particular transactions characterized by circular causality. In this approach, neurobiological bases are inseparable from interpersonal and socio-cultural factors. This approach leads to methodological changes in how mental disorders are studied and dealt with.

The Temporal Politics of Placenta Epigenetics: Bodies, Environments and Time

This article builds on feminist scholarship on new biologies and the body to describe the temporal politics of epigenetic research related to the human placenta. Drawing on interviews with scientists and observations at conferences and in laboratories, we argue that epigenetic research simultaneously positions placenta tissue as a way back into maternal and fetal bodies following birth, as a lens onto children's future well-being, and as a bankable resource for ongoing research. Our findings reflect how developmental models of health have helped recast the placenta as an agential organ that is uniquely responsive to environments during pregnancy and capable of embodying biological evidence about the effects of in utero experiences after birth. We develop the concept of 'recursive embodiment' to describe how placenta epigenetics is reimagining relationships between bodies and environments across developmental, epigenetic, and generational time, and the impacts this has for experiences of pregnancy and responsibilities related to children's health.

Homeorhesis: envisaging the logic of life trajectories in molecular research on trauma and its effects

What sets someone on a life trajectory? This question is at the heart of studies of 21st-century neurosciences that build on scientific models developed over the last 150 years that attempt to link psychopathology risk and human development. Historically, this research has documented persistent effects of singular, negative life experiences on people's subsequent development. More recently, studies have documented neuromolecular effects of early life adversity on life trajectories, resulting in models that frame lives as disproportionately affected by early negative experiences. This view is dominant, despite little evidence of the stability of the presumably early-developed molecular traits and their potential effects on phenotypes. We argue that in the context of gaps in knowledge and the need for scientists to reason across molecular and phenotypic scales, as well as time spans that can extend beyond an individual's life, specific interpretative frameworks shape the ways in which individual scientific findings are assessed. In the process, scientific reasoning oscillates between understandings of cellular homeostasis and organisms' homeorhesis, or life trajectory. Biologist and historian François Jacob described this framework as the "attitude" that researchers bring to bear on their "objects" of study. Through an analysis of, first, historical and contemporary scientific literature and then ethnographic research with neuroscientists, we consider how early life trauma came to be associated with specific psychological and neurobiological effects grounded in understandings of life trajectories. We conclude with a consideration of the conceptual, ontological, and ethical implications of interpreting life trajectories as the result of the persistence of long-embodied biological traits, persistent life environments, or both.

Epigenetic citizenship and political claims-making: the ethics of molecularizing structural racism

Epigenetics has generated excitement over its potential to inform health disparities research by capturing the molecular signatures of social experiences. This paper highlights the concerns implied by these expectations of epigenetics research and discusses the possible ramifications of 'molecularizing' the forms of social suffering currently examined in epigenetics studies. Researchers working with oppressed populations-particularly racially marginalized groups-should further anticipate how their results might be interpreted to avoid fueling prejudiced claims of biological essentialism. Introducing the concept of 'epigenetic citizenship,' this paper considers the ways environmentally responsive methylation cues may be used in direct-to-consumer testing, healthcare, and biopolitical interactions. The conclusion addresses the future of social epigenetics research and the utility of an epigenetic citizenship framework.

Researcher perspectives on ethics considerations in epigenetics: an international survey

Over the past decade, bioethicists, legal scholars and social scientists have started to investigate the potential implications of epigenetic research and technologies on medicine and society. There is growing literature discussing the most promising opportunities, as well as arising ethical, legal and social issues (ELSI). This paper explores the views of epigenetic researchers about some of these discussions. From January to March 2020, we conducted an online survey of 189 epigenetic researchers working in 31 countries. We questioned them about the scope of their field, opportunities in different areas of specialization, and ELSI in the conduct of research and knowledge translation. We also assessed their level of concern regarding four emerging non-medical applications of epigenetic testing—i.e., in life insurance, forensics, immigration and direct-to-consumer testing. Although there was strong agreement on DNA methylation, histone modifications, 3D structure of chromatin and nucleosomes being integral elements of the field, there was considerable disagreement on transcription factors, RNA interference, RNA splicing and prions. The most prevalent ELSI experienced or witnessed by respondents were in obtaining timely access to epigenetic data in existing databases, and in the communication of epigenetic findings by the media. They expressed high levels of concern regarding non-medical applications of epigenetics, echoing cautionary appraisals in the social sciences and humanities literature.

A biosocial return to race? A cautionary view for the postgenomic era

Recent studies demonstrating epigenetic and developmental sensitivity to early environments, as exemplified by fields like the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) and environmental epigenetics, are bringing new data and models to bear on debates about race, genetics, and society. Here, we first survey the historical prominence of models of environmental determinism in early formulations of racial thinking to illustrate how notions of direct environmental effects on bodies have been used to naturalize racial hierarchy and inequalities in the past. Next, we conduct a scoping review of postgenomic work in environmental epigenetics and DOHaD that looks at the role of race/ethnicity in human health (2000-2021). Although there is substantial heterogeneity in how race is conceptualized and interpreted across studies, we observe practices that may unwittingly encourage typological thinking, including: using DNA methylation as a novel marker of racial classification; neglect of variation and reversibility within supposedly homogenous racial groups; and a tendency to label and reify whole groups as pathologized or impaired. Even in the very different politico-economic and epistemic context of contemporary postgenomic science, these trends echo deeply held beliefs in Western thinking which claimed that different environments shape different bodies and then used this logic to argue for essential differences between Europeans and non-Europeans. We conclude with a series of suggestions on interpreting and reporting findings in these fields that we feel will help researchers harness this work to benefit disadvantaged groups while avoiding the inadvertent dissemination of new and old forms of stigma or prejudice.

The making of 'old eggs': the science of reproductive ageing between fertility and anti-ageing technologies

This article proposes going back in the history of reproductive medicine to shed light on the role of assisted reproductive technology (ART) in the making of 'old eggs'. Focusing on two key technologies - egg donation and cytoplasmic transfer - both of which contributed significantly to the production of scientific knowledge about reproductive ageing, the article suggests that ART can be analysed as 'in-vivo models' playing a pivotal role in the shift from age as a demographic variable to ageing understood in biological terms. It will shed light on the role of ART in locating age in the eggs and producing a cellular understanding of fertility decline. It argues that ART not only offers new means of reconfiguring the biological clock by extending fertility, but also reconfigures the biology of reproductive ageing itself. This becomes both the target and the means for new technological interventions, imaginaries and norms, anchored in women's bodies and a more plastic biology, and thereby illuminates hitherto underexplored aspects of the encounter between the science and technology of reproduction and anti-ageing.

Toward Intergenerational Ethnography: Kinship, Cohorts, and Environments in and Beyond the Biosocial Sciences

Situated alongside and drawing from emerging inquiry, debate, and reflection about making and unmaking kin at a moment of critical reflection on racial, social, and reproductive inequities and changing environments, this special edition considers how anthropology can ethnographically examine and engage with intergenerational dynamics as they influence different scales and spheres of life. It brings together medical anthropologists and science and technology scholars conducting research in Bangladesh, China, the United Kingdom, South Africa, and the United States as they reflect on the un/making of kin in settings of expert knowledge production and dissemination, including practices of seed collecting, epigenetic science, birth cohort studies, social policy generation, and clinical trials. Contributors to this special issue consider how intergenerational relations and modes of transmission take form in and through biosocial research-both as an object of study and a method of analysis. [intergenerational, environmental change, kinship, biosocial].

You Are What Your Mother Endured: Intergenerational Epigenetics, Early Caregiving, and the Temporal Embedding of Adversity

Environmental epigenetics has become a site of growing attention related to the intergenerational effects of stress, trauma, and adversity. This article draws on a multi-sited ethnography of epigenetic knowledge production in the United States and Canada to document how scientists conceptualize, model, and measure these experiences and their effects on children's neurodevelopmental and behavioral health. We find that scientists' efforts to identify the molecular effects of stress, trauma, and adversity results in a temporal focus on the mother-child dyad during early life. This has the effect of biologizing early childhood adversity, positioning it as a consequence of caregiving, and producing epigenetic findings that often align with individually oriented interventions rather than social and structural change. Our analysis suggests that epigenetic models of stress, trauma, and adversity therefore situate histories of oppression, inequality, and subjugation in discrete and gendered family relations, resulting in the temporal embedding of adversity during early life.

Milk's Flows: Making and Transmitting Kinship, Health, and Personhood

Milk provides a way of thinking about how the body is enacted in science, policy and popular culture. This paper follows the currents of moral and biomedical epistemologies circulating around milk, including via notions of inheritance, the practices of wet nursing, and emerging scientific knowledge about the health-related benefits of breastfeeding. By situating milk's flows historically and culturally it shows how constructions of milk production, lactation, and infant feeding have long served as a 'cultural signal' of prevailing conceptions of bodies and social identities. In so doing, it explores the simultaneous power of milk as both a source of dispositional and somatic health, and an index of customary forms of unity and division. A focus on breast milk further contributes to augmenting and expanding recent debates about the biology-society nexus in science and technology studies (STS), anthropology, and sociology. Seen within biomedicine today as a carrier of somatic signals about the environment, the article reflects on how milk is bound up in the responsibilisation of women's bodies and the internalising of potential risks to the health of their offspring. This implies an unlimited agency for women in averting health risks and in future-proofing their children to be better than well, elides the socioeconomic, and environmental forces pragmatically limiting this assumed agency, and the distinct lack of material and inter-personal support for the perinatal period in many nations.

Troubling Neurobiological Vulnerability: Psychiatric Risk and the Adverse Milieu in Environmental Epigenetics Research

In post-genomic science, the development of etiological models of neurobiological vulnerability to psychiatric risk has expanded exponentially in recent decades, particularly since the neuromolecular and biosocial turns in basic research. Among this research is that of McGill Group for Suicide Studies (MGSS) whose work centers on the identification of major risk factors and epigenetic traits that help to identify a specific profile of vulnerability to psychiatric conditions (e.g., depression) and predict high-risk behaviors (e.g., suicidality). Although the MGSS has attracted attention for its environmental epigenetic models of suicide risk over the years and the translation of findings from rodent studies into human populations, its overall agenda includes multiple research axes, ranging from retrospective studies to clinical and epidemiological research. Common to these research axes is a concern with the long-term effects of adverse experiences on maladaptive trajectories and negative mental health outcomes. As these findings converge with post-genomic understandings of health and also translate into new orientations in global public health, our article queries the ways in which neurobiological vulnerability is traced, measured, and profiled in environmental epigenetics and in the MGSS research. Inspired by the philosophy of Georges Canguilhem and by literature from the social studies of risk and critical public health, we explore how the epigenetic models of neurobiological vulnerability tie into a particular way of thinking about the normal, the pathological, and the milieu in terms of risk. Through this exploration, we examine how early life adversity (ELA) and neurobiological vulnerability are localized and materialized in those emerging models while also considering their broader conceptual and translational implications in the contexts of mental health and global public health interventions. In particular, we consider how narratives of maladaptive trajectories and vulnerable selves who are at risk of harm might stand in as a "new pathological" with healthy trajectories and resilient selves being potentially equated with a "new normal" way of living in the face of adversity. By troubling neurobiological vulnerability as a universal biosocial condition, we suggest that an ecosocial perspective may help us to think differently about the dynamics of mental health and distress in the adverse milieu.

Tissue culture and biological time: Alexis Carrel, Henri Bergson and the plasticity of living matter

Taking the early tissue culture experiments of Alexis Carrel in the 1910s–1930s as its example, the article explores the relationship between advances in biotechnological control over living matter and a holistic ontology of life, which stresses the temporal specificity of living things. With reference to Henri Bergson, Carrel argued that physiological time depends on an organism’s relationship to its milieu. By developing a laboratory apparatus and culture media, new objects of investigation could be made to live outside the organism and be brought to behave in novel temporal ways. In difference to recent biotechnological advances, like for example genome editing, which seek to ‘engineer’ living organisms by rebuilding them from their DNA up, then, early twentieth century interventionist laboratory practices were often linked to an understanding that biological plasticity results from organismic complexity and interactions between organism and milieu. These notions contributed to shaping laboratory apparatuses and techniques; they also helped to establish an understanding of environmental control that would allow for the production of novel ‘living things’.

A decade of epigenetic change in aging twins: Genetic and environmental contributions to longitudinal DNA methylation

BACKGROUND

Epigenetic changes may result from the interplay of environmental exposures and genetic influences and contribute to differences in age-related disease, disability, and mortality risk. However, the etiologies contributing to stability and change in DNA methylation have rarely been examined longitudinally.

METHODS

We considered DNA methylation in whole blood leukocyte DNA across a 10-year span in two samples of same-sex aging twins: (a) Swedish Adoption Twin Study of Aging (SATSA; N = 53 pairs, 53% female; 62.9 and 72.5 years, SD = 7.2 years); (b) Longitudinal Study of Aging Danish Twins (LSADT; N = 43 pairs, 72% female, 76.2 and 86.1 years, SD=1.8 years). Joint biometrical analyses were conducted on 358,836 methylation probes in common. Bivariate twin models were fitted, adjusting for age, sex, and country.

RESULTS

Overall, results suggest genetic contributions to DNA methylation across 358,836 sites tended to be small and lessen across 10 years (broad heritability M = 23.8% and 18.0%) but contributed to stability across time while person-specific factors explained emergent influences across the decade. Aging-specific sites identified from prior EWAS and methylation age clocks were more heritable than background sites. The 5037 sites that showed the greatest heritable/familial-environmental influences (p < 1E-07) were enriched for immune and inflammation pathways while 2020 low stability sites showed enrichment in stress-related pathways.

CONCLUSIONS

Across time, stability in methylation is primarily due to genetic contributions, while novel experiences and exposures contribute to methylation differences. Elevated genetic contributions at age-related methylation sites suggest that adaptions to aging and senescence may be differentially impacted by genetic background.

"It's Never Too Early": Preconception Care and Postgenomic Models of Life

In this article, we are concerned with the expanded public health interest in the "preconception period" as a window of opportunity for intervention to improve long-term population health outcomes. While definitions of the "preconception period" remain vague, new classifications and categories of life are becoming formalized as biomedicine begins to conduct research on, and suggest intervention in, this undefined and potentially unlimited time before conception. In particular, we focus on the burgeoning epidemiological interest in epigenetics and Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) research as simultaneously a theoretical spyglass into postgenomic biology and a catalyst toward a public health focus on preconception care. We historicize the notion that there are long-term implications of parental behaviors before conception, illustrating how, as Han and Das have noted, "newness comes to be embedded in older forms even as it transforms them" (Han and Das, 2015, p. 2). We then consider how DOHaD frameworks justify a number of fragmented claims about preconception by making novel evidentiary assertions. Engaging with the philosophy of Georges Canguilhem, we examine the relationship between reproductive risk and revised understandings of biological permeability, and discuss some of the epistemic and political implications of emerging claims in postgenomics.

Genomic expertise in action: molecular tumour boards and decision-making in precision oncology

The recent development of cancer precision medicine is associated with the emergence of 'molecular tumour boards' (MTBs). Attended by a heterogenous set of practitioners, MTBs link genomic platforms to clinical practices by establishing 'actionable' connections between drugs and molecular alterations. Their activities rely on a number of evidential resources - for example databases, clinical trial results, basic knowledge about mutations and pathways - that need to be associated with the clinical trajectory of individual patients. Experts from various domains are required to master and align diverse kinds of information. However, rather than examining MTBs as an institution interfacing different kinds of expertise embedded in individual experts, we argue that expertise is the emergent outcome of MTBs, which can be conceptualised as networks or 'agencements' of humans and devices. Based on the ethnographic analysis of the activities of four clinical trial MTBs (three in France and an international one) and of two French routine-care MTBs, the paper analyses how MTBs produce therapeutic decisions, centring on the new kind of expertise they engender. The development and activities of MTBs signal a profound transformation of the evidentiary basis and processes upon which biomedical expertise and decision-making in oncology are predicated and, in particular, the emergence of a clinic of variants.

Epigenetics, ethics, law and society: A multidisciplinary review of descriptive, instrumental, dialectical and reflexive analyses

Epigenetics, defined as 'the study of mitotically and/or meiotically heritable changes in gene function that cannot be explained by changes in DNA sequence', has emerged as a promissory yet controversial field of scientific inquiry over the past decade. Scholars from many disciplines have formulated both optimistic and cautionary claims regarding its potential normative implications. This article provides a comprehensive review of the nascent literature at the crossroads of epigenetics, ethics, law and society. It describes nine emerging areas of discussion, relating to (1) the impact of epigenetics on the nature versus nurture dualism, (2) the potential resulting biologization of the social, (3) the meaning of epigenetics for public health, its potential influence on (4) reproduction and parenting, (5) political theory and (6) legal proceedings, and concerns regarding (7) stigmatization and discrimination, (8) privacy protection and (9) knowledge translation. While there is some degree of similarity between the nature and content of these areas and the abundant literature on ethical, legal and social issues in genetics, the potential implications of epigenetics ought not be conflated with the latter. Critical studies on epigenetics are emerging within a separate space of bioethical and biopolitical investigations and claims, with scholars from various epistemological standpoints utilizing distinct yet complementary analytical approaches.

Doctors as moral pioneers: Negotiated boundaries of assisted conception in Colombia

New biotechnologies such as assisted conception are socially embedded artefacts that raise context-specific ethical, moral and social anxieties. In contexts where the regulations of these profitable developments are limited or ambiguous, and competition between private facilities is high, individual doctors become morally and socially responsible for determining the parameters of administering such therapies. Ethnographic research at two private fertility centres in Colombia reveals that doctors do not determine boundaries based on monetary gain but rather personal morals, social norms and professional obligations. Medical professionals hold diverse perceptions of assisted conception, and often struggle to make decisions regarding who should access such therapies, who are ideal gamete donors and the fate of extra embryos. The complexity of these perceptions applied in a context of limited regulation and the competition of private medicine impacts the praxis of assisted conception. As doctors determine the boundaries of their practice they not only create variation between clinical practices, but also make moral decisions regarding who should be parents, how families should be formed and the significance of embryos. Thus, in navigating their everyday practices, doctors also shape the social world.

Environmental Politics of Reproduction

What constitutes "human reproduction" is under negotiation as its biology, social nature, and cultural valences are increasingly perceived as bound up in environmental issues. This review maps the growing overlap between formerly rather separate domains of reproductive politics and environmental politics, examining three interrelated areas. The first is the emergence of an intersectional environmental reproductive justice framework in activism and environmental health science. The second is the biomedical delineation of the environment of reproduction and development as an object of growing research and intervention, as well as the marking off of early-life environments as an "exposed biology" consequential to the entire life span. Third is researchers' critical engagement with the reproductive subject of environmental politics and the lived experience of reproduction in environmentally dystopic times. Efforts to rethink the intersections of reproductive and environmental politics are found throughout these three areas.

Markers as mediators: A review and synthesis of epigenetics literature

Epigenetics, the study of the processes that control gene expression without a change in DNA sequence, highlights the importance of environmental factors in gene regulation. This paper maps the terrain of epigenetics and identifies four main research subfields: gene expression; molecular epigenetics; clinical epigenetics and epigenetic epidemiology. Within and across these fields, we analyse of what is conceptualised as environment and demonstrate the variable ways authors understand epigenetics environments. Then, following an analysis of the discursive strategies employed by epigenetics researchers, we demonstrate how authors portray the interactions between genes, epigenetics, and environment as relationships linking the outside (where the environment is located) with the inside (where the genes are located). We argue that authors assign specific roles to each actor: the environment as the active player initiating the relationship, the genes as recipients, and epigenetics as mediators between environment and genes. Framed as mediators, epigenetic markers can be understood as enablers of communication between environment and genome, capable of processing and organising signals so as to regulate the interactions between the actors of epigenetic relationships. This finding complicates the observation by social science scholars that the interactions between environment and genes can be understood through the concept of signal.

Fetal neurology: Principles and practice with a life-course perspective

Clinical service, educational, and research components of a fetal/neonatal neurology program are anchored by the disciplines of developmental origins of health and disease and life-course science as programmatic principles. Prenatal participation provides perspectives on maternal, fetal, and placental contributions to health or disease for fetal and subsequent neonatal neurology consultations. This program also provides an early-life diagnostic perspective for neurologic specialties concerned with brain health and disease throughout childhood and adulthood. Animal models and birth cohort studies have demonstrated how the science of epigenetics helps to understand gene-environment interactions to better predict brain health or disease. Fetal neurology consultations provide important diagnostic contributions during critical or sensitive periods of brain development when future neurotherapeutic interventions will maximize adaptive neuroplasticity. Age-specific normative neuroinformatics databases that employ computer-based strategies to integrate clinical/demographic, neuroimaging, neurophysiologic, and genetic datasets will more accurately identify either symptomatic patients or those at risk for brain disorders who would benefit from preventive, rescue, or reparative treatment choices throughout the life span.

Calibrating cancer risk, uncertainty and environments: Genetics and their contexts in southern Brazil

Drawing on empirical ethnographic research in Brazil this paper examines how in the spaces between identifying genetic markers and conditional cancer risk, environments and diverse epigenetic logics are emerging and being negotiated among research and clinical communities, patients and their families. Focusing on an arena of research and medical intervention related to a gene variant known as R337h, thought to occur with high frequency in the south of Brazil and linked to the cancer syndrome Li-Fraumeni, it emphasises the relevance of examining epigenetics as an emic category but also its utility as an analytic category. It shows how in a context of not yet fully knowing how and in what ways R337h contributes to increased cancer, a range of different 'environments' are invoked that unevenly articulate an emerging and still inchoate and unfolding terrain of understanding. In an arena of expanding genomic research and medicine, where the identification of low risk mutations associated with cancer is increasingly common, the Brazilian case provides a particular lens on the way environments and genes are being meaningfully calibrated and how differently implicated communities resourcefully populate the gaps in knowledge and understanding with consequences for research, care and embodied risk.

The paradox of care in behavioral epigenetics: Constructing early-life adversity in the lab

Many epigenetic studies focus on how stress, trauma, and care become molecularly embodied, affect gene expression without changing DNA sequence, and produce changes that influence the health and behavior of individuals, their offspring, and future generations. This article describes how care has become central in research on the epigenetic effects of early-life adversity. My analysis draws on two years of ethnographic research in a behavioral epigenetics laboratory in the United States. Building on traditions in feminist theory and the sociology of science, I document how care is enacted with research samples, experimental protocols, and behavioral endpoints in experiments with model organisms. My findings point to tensions between researchers' care for the data and their measurement of adversity as a discrete variable in the form of maternal interaction, neglect, and abuse. I argue that these tensions suggest a "paradox of care" that is actively shaping how epigenetic knowledge is produced and its impacts in society. My analysis shows how decisions in the lab are shaping new understandings of how early-life experiences influence health, with significant impacts on our expectations of mothers and pregnant women. This study suggests that the more complex explanations of health and development promised by epigenetics are simultaneously constructed and constrained by caring practices in the laboratory.

How to do things with metaphors: engineering life as hodgepodge

This paper presents a collaboration between social scientists and a chemist exploring the promises for new therapy development at the intersection between synthetic biology and nanotechnology. Drawing from ethnographic studies of laboratories and a recorded discussion between the three authors, we interrogate the metaphors that underpin what Mackenzie (Futures 48:5-12 2013) has identified as a recursive relationship in the iconography of the life sciences and its infrastructure. Focusing specifically on the use of gene editing techniques in synthetic biology and bio-nanotechnology, we focus our analysis on the key metaphors of 'evolutionary life as hodge-podge' within which 'cutting' of DNA and the 'sticking' and 'binding' of engineered particles to proteins can be performed by researchers in laboratory settings. Taken together, we argue that these metaphors are consequential for understanding metaphors of life-as-machine and the prevalence of notions of 'engineering life'. Exploring the ways in which notions of cutting, targeting and life as an evolutionary hodgepodge prefigure a more contingent notion of engineering and synthesis we close by considering the interpretive implications for ethnomethodological approaches to contemporary life science research.

A Postgenomic Body: Histories, Genealogy, Politics

This article sets the stage for a genealogy of the postgenomic body. It starts with the current transformative views of epigenetics and microbiomics to offer a more pluralistic history in which the ethical problem of how to live with a permeable body - that is plasticity as a form of life - is pervasive in traditions pre-dating and coexisting with modern biomedicine (particularly humoralism in its several ramifications). To challenge universalizing narratives, I draw on genealogical method to illuminate the unequal distribution of plasticity across gender and ethnic groups. Finally, after analysing postgenomics as a different thought-style to genomics, I outline some of its implications for notions of plasticity. I argue that postgenomic plasticity is neither a modernistic plasticity of instrumental control of the body nor a postmodernist celebration of endless potentialities. It is instead closer to an alter-modernistic view that disrupts clear boundaries between openness and determination, individual and community.

Epigenetic Discrimination: Emerging Applications of Epigenetics Pointing to the Limitations of Policies Against Genetic Discrimination

Over more than two decades, various policies have been adopted worldwide to restrict the use of individual genetic information for non-medical reasons by third parties and prevent ‘genetic discrimination’. In this paper, we bring attention to the growing interest for individual epigenetic information by insurers and forensic scientists. We question whether such interest could lead to ‘epigenetic discrimination’ – the differential adverse treatment or abusive profiling of individuals or groups based on their actual or presumed epigenetic characteristics – and argue that we might already be facing the limitations of recently adopted normative approaches against genetic discrimination. First, we highlight some similarities and differences between genetic and epigenetic modifications, and stress potential challenges to regulating epigenetic discrimination. Second, we argue that most existing normative approaches against genetic discrimination fall short in providing oversight into the field of epigenetics. We conclude with a call for discussion on the issue, and the development of comprehensive and forward-looking preventive strategies against epigenetic discrimination.

The fluidity of biosocial identity and the effects of place, space, and time

Public and scientific conceptions of identity are changing alongside advances in biotechnology, with important relevance to health and medicine. In particular, biological identity, once predominantly conceived as static (e.g., related to DNA, dental records, fingerprints) is now being recognized as dynamic or fluid, mirroring contemporary understandings of psychological and social identity. The dynamism of biological identity comes from the individual body's unique relationship with the world surrounding it, and therefore may best be described as biosocial. This paper reviews advances in scientific understandings of identity and presents a model that contrasts prior static approaches to biological identity from more recent dynamically-relational ones. This emerging viewpoint is of broad significance to health and medicine, particularly as medicine recognizes the significance of biography - i.e. the multiple, dense interactions imparted on a body across spatio-temporal dimensions - to phenotypic prediction, especially disease risk.

Race in an epigenetic time: thinking biology in the plural

The notion that biological memories of environmental experiences can be embedded in the human genome and even transmitted transgenerationally is increasingly relevant in the postgenomic world, particularly in molecular epigenetics, where the genome is conceptualized as porous to environmental signals. In this article I discuss the current rethinking of race in epigenetic rather than genetic terms, emphasizing some of its paradoxical implications, especially for public policy. I claim in particular that: (i) if sociologists want to investigate race in a postgenomic world they should pay more attention to this novel plastic and biosocial view of race; and (ii) there are no reasons to believe that an epigenetic view will extinguish race, or that soft-inheritance claims will produce a less exclusionary discourse than genetics (hard heredity). Quite the opposite, the ground for a re-racialization of social debates and the reinforcement of biological boundaries between groups are highlighted in the article.

Disentangling life: Darwin, selectionism, and the postgenomic return of the environment

In this paper, I analyze the disruptive impact of Darwinian selectionism for the century-long tradition in which the environment had a direct causative role in shaping an organism's traits. In the case of humans, the surrounding environment often determined not only the physical, but also the mental and moral features of individuals and whole populations. With its apparatus of indirect effects, random variations, and a much less harmonious view of nature and adaptation, Darwinian selectionism severed the deep imbrication of organism and milieu posited by these traditional environmentalist models. This move had radical implications well beyond strictly biological debates. In my essay, I discuss the problematization of the moral idiom of environmentalism by William James and August Weismann who adopted a selectionist view of the development of mental faculties. These debates show the complex moral discourse associated with the environmentalist-selectionist dilemma. They also well illustrate how the moral reverberations of selectionism went well beyond the stereotyped associations with biological fatalism or passivity of the organism. Rereading them today may be helpful as a genealogical guide to the complex ethical quandaries unfolding in the current postgenomic scenario in which a revival of new environmentalist themes is taking place.

Translating genetics beyond bench and bedside: A comparative perspective on health care infrastructures for 'familial' breast cancer

Developments in genomics research are considered to have great potential for improving health care - making genomics an urgent site for translational efforts. Yet while much emphasis is put on the technical challenges of translation, there is less scholarly attention for the social infrastructures through which novel medical interventions may be delivered to patient populations. Reflecting the idea that cancer is at the frontier of genomic applications in health care, this paper explores how the assessment of familial breast cancer risks was 'translated' into routine health care in Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The paper identifies regulation, institutionalization and standardization as key mechanisms of translation that find distinct expression in particular sociocultural contexts and shape both the social and technical making of genomics into routine clinical practice. Translation is therefore an area of social as well as technical concern, and therefore requires collective decision-making.

The maternal body as environment in autism science

Research on autism and environmental risk factors has expanded substantially in recent years. My analysis draws attention to the regimes of perceptibility that shape how the environment is materialized in post-genomic science. I focus on how more complex narratives of autism's causes and social anxieties surrounding child development have helped situate autism risk in women's bodies before and during pregnancy. This has resulted in what I call the maternal body as environment in autism science. I show that this figure involves three characteristics: the molecularization of the environment, an individualization of risk, and the internalization of responsibility. I argue that these three features point to a new spatial and temporal politics of risk and responsibility that may heighten social and medical surveillance of women's bodies and decisions, eclipsing larger questions about the uneven distribution of exposures in society and more holistic understandings of health that include neurodiversity. I conclude by considering what the maternal body as environment signals for women, social justice, and the politics of environmental health in the post-genomic era.

Epigenetics, Media Coverage, and Parent Responsibilities in the Post-Genomic Era

Environmental epigenetics is the study of how exposures and experiences can turn genes "on" or "off" without changing DNA sequence. By examining the influence that environmental conditions including diet, stress, trauma, toxins, and care can have on gene expression, this science suggests molecular connections between the environment, genetics, and how acquired characteristics may be inherited across generations. The rapid expansion of research in this area has attracted growing media attention. This coverage has implications for how parents and prospective parents understand health and their perceived responsibilities for children's wellbeing. This review provides insight into epigenetic research, its coverage in the media, and the social and ethical implications of this science for patients and clinicians. As epigenetic findings continue to elucidate the complex relationships between nature and nurture, it becomes critical to examine how representations of this science may influence patient experiences of risk and responsibility. This review describes some of the social and ethical implications of epigenetic research today.

Enacting the molecular imperative: How gene-environment interaction research links bodies and environments in the post-genomic age

Despite a proclaimed shift from 'nature versus nurture' to 'genes and environment' paradigms within biomedical and genomic science, capturing the environment and identifying gene-environment interactions (GEIs) has remained a challenge. What does 'the environment' mean in the post-genomic age? In this paper, we present qualitative data from a study of 33 principal investigators funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health to conduct etiological research on three complex diseases (cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes). We examine their research practices and perspectives on the environment through the concept of molecularization: the social processes and transformations through which phenomena (diseases, identities, pollution, food, racial/ethnic classifications) are re-defined in terms of their molecular components and described in the language of molecular biology. We show how GEI researchers' expansive conceptualizations of the environment ultimately yield to the imperative to molecularize and personalize the environment. They seek to 'go into the body' and re-work the boundaries between bodies and environments. In the process, they create epistemic hinges to facilitate a turn from efforts to understand social and environmental exposures outside the body, to quantifying their effects inside the body. GEI researchers respond to these emergent imperatives with a mixture of excitement, ambivalence and frustration. We reflect on how GEI researchers struggle to make meaning of molecules in their work, and how they grapple with molecularization as a methodological and rhetorical imperative as well as a process transforming biomedical research practices.

Exploring the post-genomic world: differing explanatory and manipulatory functions of post-genomic sciences

Richard Lewontin proposed that the ability of a scientific field to create a narrative for public understanding garners it social relevance. This article applies Lewontin's conceptual framework of the functions of science (manipulatory and explanatory) to compare and explain the current differences in perceived societal relevance of genetics/genomics and proteomics. We provide three examples to illustrate the social relevance and strong cultural narrative of genetics/genomics for which no counterpart exists for proteomics. We argue that the major difference between genetics/genomics and proteomics is that genomics has a strong explanatory function, due to the strong cultural narrative of heredity. Based on qualitative interviews and observations of proteomics conferences, we suggest that the nature of proteins, lack of public understanding, and theoretical complexity exacerbates this difference for proteomics. Lewontin's framework suggests that social scientists may find that omics sciences affect social relations in different ways than past analyses of genetics.