timothyd

I would concur with both you and the moderator, except, I was responding to the Alvin Toffler quotation above dealing with the asserted biological limitations of mankind. I was encouraged to give that reply, by the number of physicists that write on biology topics. I just finished Warner R Loewenstein's Physics in Mind: a Quantum View of the Brain, as a recent example.

Thanks, interesting. But I'm not sure that the observed impact was either epigenetic or genetic from the verbiage in the abstract.

Anyone that says man has limited biological potential for change, if not completely wrong, is certainly not current in biology/epigenetics. In very brief, what the organism does, eats, breathes, etc. can result in either methylation or acetylation of genes, histones, and mRNA. The methylation restricts or prevents the expression of the impacted gene/histone/mRNA. Acetylation increases the expression of genes. Methylation can take the form of either one epigene, two, and recently three have been very recently observed. Methylation of histones is more reversible than that of genes. Science is just discovering, much to its amazement, that epigenetics can be inherited, for many generations. To put it succinctly, in part, Lamarck was correct!

See also http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130421153449.htm

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of reasons not to do anything. After a very successful twenty year career in business, and equally successful thirty-seven years practicing business, property and environmental defense law, I say Go FOR IT. The number one reason of my past success has been curiosity coupled with the ability to take risks and do what no one else had thought of or done. Along the way, or more accurately, ways, I failed innumerable times, but learned a lot, and built on both successes and failures. As far as the established disciplineis concerned, well known Stanford professor Robert Sapolsky has opined that everyone should change their career, as it is the new person to the discipline that approaches it from a novel perspective. Thomas Kuhn, dealing with Scientific Revolutions, would suggest the same. My own view is a little different. As long as you are learning more and more about life, you are engaged in a course of conduct that is fairly limited to human beings, even if it only enhances your personal knowledge and worldview. From the standpoint of physics you will be processing more and more information, which could be asserted to be "negative entropy." From a practical standpoint, now working on my Master's degree and a third bachelors degree, you might want to consider just taking one online course per term from any public and accredited University, which will give you unlimited access to immense resources and database, all at no charge. Good luck and best wishes!

Thank you. Good articles regarding tobacco, though they did not show any comparable ages. Most human children do not start smoking at shortly after birth, and may not smoke much before becoming a parent. Thus the intergenerational effect may be limited if at all. The source you provided makes my case about epigenetics and alcohol. And epigenetic are at least in part erased from the germline, and further, the ones from the male generally seem to have little residual effect.

I think it goes without saying that alcohol and tobacco have a genetic impact on the user, in a broad variety of systems or organs. I'm still completely unaware of any study that shows or suggests that it has any transgenerational potential. A search of keywords really doesn't answer that.

I don't know what effect there would be, if any, at the genetic level. Certainly there will likely be an impact at the epigenetic level. Since epigenetics doesn't really change genes, it simply alters by increasing or decreasing the level of expression of certain genes, I would offer that the impact would more likely be at the histone level. However, from the information you provide, namely 30+ years of smoking and drinking, if that didn't start until age 20 that would make the individual over fifty, and a highly unlikely candidate for genetic or epigenetic contribution to any offspring, particularly if that were a female.

That was an interesting article that you cited to. There may very well be some genetic interplay with culture. However, I think the more recent discoveries in epigenetics may be a better answer, or is at least part of the answer. Biology has been incredibly slow to deal with, respond to, and/or incorporate the terrific advances in the understanding of epigenetics over the past 7 to 10 years. Your intro suggested you were from Utah. There is a U of UT site devoted to epigenetics. The last time I looked, it was pretty current. There are two fairly good books available on the subject. The slightly older one, which is very doubtful of transgenerational epigenetic communication, is by Nessa Carey, entitled the Epigenetics Revolution. It is a very good read. The more recent, and up-to-date as to intergenerational transfer, Is Epigenetics: How Environment Shapes Our Genes by Richard C Francis. The title is a little misleading. Epigenetics don't "shape" the genes. They, through methylation, reduce or prevent the expression of certain genes, and, through acetylation enhance the expression of certain genes. This appears to be not only at the genetic level (which is very difficult to reverse) but at the histone and RNA levels, which are much more reversible. The most recent statement I could find about that can be viewed at www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130509123647 Have a lovely day.