Why Parents Make Us What We Are

In the previous post I cited the case of the Bach and other families of famous musicians as illustrating epigenetic aspects of inheritance while contradicting the Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characteristics that is confused with epigenetics in so many people’s minds.

Now Valter Tucci has sent me an online lecture in which he refutes a similar confusion related to the epigenetics of nurturing, which many assume is either contrary to nature, or at least above and beyond genetics. But nurture is natural, at least for mammals, and as Professor Tucci explains, imprinted genes have evolved in mammals for precisely this reason. As he shows in the case of his research into imprinted genes and REM sleep which I discussed in a recent post, it's a question of nurture via nature:

(With thanks and congratulations to Valter Tucci.)