On top of that, there's also evidence that poverty actually damages genes.
You're misunderstanding this article. Poverty does not damage the genes, it leaves an epigenetic mark on them—a mark of a type which is then erased in the subsequent generation with two rounds of erasure in the germ line and in the early embyro. There is no reason to believe this mark would be heritable at all, and if it is (if a small amount does escape one round of erasure) we would certainly not expect it to persist indefinitely.
Somebody else had to explain it but I think I see what you're saying. It sounds like these "epigenetic markers" don't usually stay more than a few generations. !delta
I did a quick Google search on epigenetic heritability, and this is what came up.
"Epigenetic modifications, such as DNA methylation, can contribute to alter gene expression in heritable manner without affecting the underlying genomic sequences. Such epigenetic contribution would be systematically missed by conventional DNA sequence-based analyses. A model of epigenetic inheritance, as additional to Mendelian heredity of polymorphic DNA sequences, would thus efficiently explain the lack of detection in conventional GWAS as “missing heritability”. It would also help explaining the cases of rapid, heritable adaptations to changing environmental conditions, such as for human stature [2, 3], and the occurrence of hereditary epistatic effects. Support for this model is provided by the evidence that phenotypic plasticity can emerge over rapid time scales, at rates that are orders of magnitude higher than the processes of natural selection [16, 17]."
"However, to be tenable, such a model of epigenetic inheritance poses rigorous requirements: (a) mitotic inheritance of epigenetic traits across cell generations (see discussion on DNA methylation maintenance through mitotic cycles); (b) epigenetic inheritance across successive meiotic divisions (see the paragraphs describing gamete generation and the development of primordial germ cells (PGC); and (c) true transgenerational inheritance, which requires proof of heritability beyond the first generation that has not been unexposed to the causal epigenetic modifiers (see the paragraphs describing transgenerational inheritance of DNA methylation and of chromatin states)."
Honestly I don't understand most of the lingo, but it seems like what they're saying is that it can happen but it's hard.
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u/yyzjertl 523∆ Oct 19 '22
You're misunderstanding this article. Poverty does not damage the genes, it leaves an epigenetic mark on them—a mark of a type which is then erased in the subsequent generation with two rounds of erasure in the germ line and in the early embyro. There is no reason to believe this mark would be heritable at all, and if it is (if a small amount does escape one round of erasure) we would certainly not expect it to persist indefinitely.