Epigenetics - Research Paper Example

Such environmental factors may include their lifestyles, the foods they eat or even the use of make up. Powerful abnormal persistent memories may lead to changes in one’s behavior. Chromatin modifications relate to learning and memory and could therefore help give an insight into relation between memory and drug seeking behavior (Malvaez, 2009). Individuals addicted to drug use may end up having memory lapses. After extended periods of abstinence, a relapse may occur. This is because relapse may be caused by exposure to external forces previously associated with the drug use like places, people or paraphernalia.

(O’Brien, 1988) There may be no history of a disease like cancer in one’s family. However, if one lives a life that predisposes them to conditions that may facilitate spread of cancer, the disease will crawl into their systems. You are born with family history but your lifestyle dictates who you become. The Environment and lifestyle, it could be healthy or unhealthy largely affects the concept of epigenetics. Family history may therefore not play a big role in shaping what one eventually becomes.

We’re born with genes of the family. However, our lifestyles end up dictating what we actually become. Besides, our environments end up playing a role in what we become. Environment can be social or natural. If identical twins adopt lifestyles completely different from each other, say one is physically active and the other is not, the physically active one is likely not to suffer from cardiovascular diseases unlike the physically inactive one. With regard to life expectancy, our grandparents may have lived longer than the subsequent generation.

This may be due to the lifestyles the grandparents lived which could have impacted on their genes and thus were subsequently passed to the next generations hence manifested