Childhood poverty leaves its mark on adult genetics

16:30 26 October 2011 by Andy Coghlan

Genes can be reset during early life in profoundly different ways depending on whether children grow up in privileged or deprived households, a landmark study has shown.

 Although children in rich and poor households have very similar sets of genes, the scale of adversity at home dictates which combinations of those genes are switched on or silenced through a process called epigenesis – presumably to maximise the chance of survival.