Postgenomics: Perspectives on Biology after the Genome
Sarah S. Richardson is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University, jointly appointed in the Department of the History of Science and the Committee on Degrees in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. She is the author of Sex Itself: The Search for Male and Female in the Human Genome.
Hallam Stevens is Assistant Professor of History in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). He is the author of Life Out of Sequence: A Data-Driven History of Bioinformatics.
Sarah S. Richardson is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University, jointly appointed in the Department of the History of Science and the Committee on Degrees in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. She is the author of Sex Itself: The Search for Male and Female in the Human Genome.
Hallam Stevens is Assistant Professor of History in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). He is the author of Life Out of Sequence: A Data-Driven History of Bioinformatics.
Maternal Bodies in the Postgenomic Order: Gender and the Explanatory Landscape of Epigenetics
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Published:April 2015
Sarah S. Richardson, 2015. "Maternal Bodies in the Postgenomic Order: Gender and the Explanatory Landscape of Epigenetics", Postgenomics: Perspectives on Biology after the Genome, Sarah S. Richardson, Hallam Stevens
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Epigenetics, the study of how experiences, environments, and exposures alter gene expression, is a vibrant new area of postgenomic life sciences research. Epigenetics research situates the maternal body as a central site of epigenetic programming and transmission, and as a significant locus of medical and public health intervention. As an epigenetic vector, the maternal body is at once a background element, a medium for the fetus. Yet it is also a ‘critical’ developmental context in which environmental exposures are amplified, cues are transmitted, and genes are programmed. Reflection on epigenetics-based biomedical and public health interventions recommended by leading scientists suggests a need for sensitivity to how certain bodies or spaces become intensive targets of intervention when conceptualized as amplifying vectors of risk within the explanatory landscape of epigenetics.
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