Our biology is listening’
Biomarkers as molecular vestiges of early life and the production of positive childhood experiences in behavioral epigenetics
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 16841981 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Robbin Jeffries Hein (0000-0003-4569-8062, Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, corresponding author), Martine Lappé (0000-0001-6107-4992, California Polytechnic State University), Fionna Francis Fahey (State Street (United States)) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 20 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 223-247 |
| Publication date | 2025-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | BioSocieties (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1745-8552 • E-ISSN: 1745-8560 |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1057/s41292-024-00337-y |
| PMID | 40620839 |
| OpenAlex | W4402099793 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 119 |
The sciences of environmental epigenetics and the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease have become central in efforts to understand how early life experiences impact health across the life course. This paper draws on interviews with epigenetic scientists and laboratory observations in the United States and Canada to show how scientists conceptualize epigenetic biomarkers as molecular vestiges of early life and the consequences this has for postgenomic approaches to health, risk, and intervention. We argue that this process demarcates early life as the optimal time to study and intervene in health and positions biomarkers as conceptual and methodological tools that scientists mobilize to reimagine early life environments. These environments include Positive Childhood Experiences (PCEs), which reflect an emergent and increasingly prominent epistemic object in behavioral epigenetics. Though distinct from widespread research on Early Life Adversity, we show how PCEs continue to essentialize experience in gendered and individualized ways. Further, this paper suggests that focusing on biomarkers as molecular vestiges of early life allows scientists to create stability despite ongoing epistemological and biological unknowns in epigenetics and DOHaD. Our findings contribute new perspectives to social studies of epigenetics, biomarkers, and the production of novel epistemic objects in postgenomic knowledge practices
Active listening · Biology · Cognitive science · Developmental psychology · Environmental ethics · Epigenetics · Psychotherapist · Birth, Development, and Health · Epigenetics and DNA Methylation · Psychology · Race, Genetics, and Society · Genetics
Reproductive Injustice
Genetics and Philosophy
Developmental Origins of Health and Disease
Early Childhood Adversity, Toxic Stress, and the Role of the Pediatrician
Responding to ACEs With Hope
The origins of the developmental origins theory
The fetal and infant origins of adult disease.
Fetal origins of coronary heart disease
In utero programming of chronic disease
Positive Childhood Experiences and Adult Mental and Relational Health in a Statewide Sample
Epigenetic programming by maternal behavior
Maternal Care, Gene Expression, and the Transmission of Individual Differences in Stress Reactivity Across Generations
Neuroscience, Molecular Biology, and the Childhood Roots of Health Disparities
The effect of multiple adverse childhood experiences on health
Relationship of Childhood Abuse and Household Dysfunction to Many of the Leading Causes of Death in Adults
Stress, Adaptation, and Disease
Ethnography in/of the World System
Epistemic modesty, ostentatiousness and the uncertainties of epigenetics: on the knowledge machinery of (social) science
The Maternal Imprint
Impressionable Biologies
Epigenetics and the embodiment of race
A Reply to David Bloor
Epidemiologists’ ambivalence towards the epigenetics of social adversity
Epigenetics and aging research
Epigenetics at work
Situating local biologies
Calibrating cancer risk, uncertainty and environments
It was there all along”
Food as exposure
Of rats and women
Scrutinizing the epigenetics revolution
Situating the biosocial
Markers as mediators
The paradox of care in behavioral epigenetics
Biomarkers and brains
Epigenetic determinism in science and society
Alzheimer’s disease and the development of a post-genomic science
On being “actionable”
Telescoping the origins of obesity to women's bodies
Troubling Neurobiological Vulnerability
Race and the new epigenetic biopolitics of environmental health
Translational biomedicine in action
Homeorhesis
The implications of environmental epigenetics
Enacting biosocial complexity
Modeling mouse, human, and discipline
The maternal body as environment in autism science
Caring for biosocial complexity. Articulations of the environment in research on the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease
Ordinary magic
The “early life” origins of obesity‐related health disorders
Commentary
Recovering the Body
Anticipation
Mapping the new molecular landscape
Epigenomic Stories
Epigenetics and Obesity
A Postgenomic Body
Enacting the molecular imperative
The Social as Signal in the Body of Chromatin
Social Epigenetics
The Temporal Politics of Placenta Epigenetics
Learning to See Cancer in Early Detection Research
Speech and Brain Mechanisms
Negotiating Novelty
Race, Gender, and Chains of Disadvantage
Why Sociology Matters to Race and Biosocial Science
From Social Structure to Gene Regulation, and Back
Integrating Biomarkers in Social Stratification and Health Research
Environmental Politics of Reproduction
Early Environments, Stress, and the Epigenetics of Human Health
You Are What Your Mother Endured
Reworking the Social Determinants of Health
The Redistribution of Reproductive Responsibility
Managing biomedical uncertainty
Gendered imaginaries
Comprehending the Body in the Era of the Epigenome
Improvising Race
Eugenics, Epigenetics, and Obesity Predisposition among Mexican Mestizos
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |