Lye - gene by environment interaction

If you think about it, we all went through a journey that took us from being a single cell, which was the fertilized egg, through to the birth of that amazing, wonderful child. That process takes just nine months, and yet the biology that it takes to go from a single cell, that cell has to produce the embryo proper or the placenta, it has to define different organs that are going to be developed, it has to define different cell types, it has to have blood vessels that allow circulation to go around the baby, a nervous system that controls everything. The biology to do that is just absolutely remarkable. In fact, if ever there’s a good use of the word “miracle,” I would say it’s how that single cell can produce a baby. 

What we know is that the broad blueprint for that is contained within our genes. The genes control how a cell divides. They control how a cell produces; differentiates into different cell types and how organs are formed and such like. But within that blueprint, the environment can play a huge role in modifying outcomes, modifying the types of structures and how they work. So we think that this interaction between the genetic blueprint and the child’s environment is critically important in setting that child on a trajectory that will influence their lifelong health and well-being.  

One of the things that is quite clear is that adverse environments are suboptimal for that developmental process. It’s similar if we want to build a house. There are all sorts of rules and regulations for how you prepare the foundations for that house, so that as the house is; goes through its life of many, many, many years, it’s going to stand up to all the weather, all the influences that are going to affect it. And very much the same way when we’re building a child, we want the child’s foundations to be very strong. And so, how they’re set up over those first 2000 days, in particular during pregnancy itself is very, very important for their future health and well-being.