mindstalk | (Reply)

That FAQ has some other entries on the Bell Curve as well.

Have you heard of gene imprinting? It's a hot new thing in genomics, genes being inherited in on or off positions under various conditions -- part of the DNA gets methylated, so it's not expressed. The cases I know for sure about relate to the fetus: fetal-growth genes will be turned on if inherited from the father, off if from the mother; vice-versa for growth-suppression genes. A little selfish genetic war over how much maternal resources the fetus gets.

I'm not sure if the following is data or speculation, but I've seen talk about organisms who experience starvation having offspring who are pre-disposed to put on weight. The DNA strings haven't changed, but certain genes have been turned on, and can take a few generations to turn off even if conditions remain affluent. So if you see some study about black children being adopted and still scoring low, there are multiple explanations, beyond "bias against black" or black genes being bad: of course the child might have been malnourished in the womb, but also if their mother or grandmother had been in stressful circumstances, the genes might still be imprinted for a conservative metabolism or something (lower brain growth, lower conduction speeds, whatever).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/12/AR2006071201883.html
Ah, an article, talking about the obesity effect. So I think imprinting may refer specifically to parental inheritance differences, but epigenesis is a more general phenomenon.