Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Frogaar t1_ivdhb1g wrote

Reply to comment by Indemnity4 in In IVF treatment, when an embryo is donated to and carried by someone other than the biological mother, does the carrier have any impact on the child's genetics? by [deleted]

Thank you for taking the time to respond. So when we talk about epigenetics, does that mean an example of this could be if the mother was really stressed during the pregnancy, the high levels of cortisol could (hypothetically) make the offspring more susceptible to developing a mood disorder later in life? What would be other ways gene expression might be affected by pregnancy (if you don’t mind me asking)?

1

Indemnity4 t1_ivqqk6g wrote

Cortisol is only one example of a potential stressor. We have no way to link that to any output.

A simpler example is nutrition. There is a famous study of pregnant mothers who were starving in 1944-45 (note: actually starving-to-death-starving, not just a little bit skinny). A pregnant person who is starving is more likely to produce babies that grow into short adults, plus those short adults also have short children (grandchild from the starving mother).

2