Although we generally experience our bodies as being biologically stable
across time and situations, an emerging field of
research is demonstrating that external social
conditions, especially our subjective perceptions of those conditions,
can
influence our most basic internal biological
processes—namely, the expression of our genes. This research on human social genomics
has begun to identify the types of genes that are subject to
social-environmental regulation, the neural and molecular mechanisms
that mediate the effects of social processes on
gene expression, and the genetic polymorphisms that moderate individual
differences
in genomic sensitivity to social context. The
molecular models resulting from this research provide new opportunities
for
understanding how social and genetic factors
interact to shape complex behavioral phenotypes and susceptibility to
disease.
This research also sheds new light on the evolution
of the human genome and challenges the fundamental belief that our
molecular
makeup is relatively stable and impermeable to
social-environmental influence.
http://cpx.sagepub.com/content/1/3/331
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