Molecular Epigenetics, the Biology of Memory, and Biology as Memory

Abstract

Developmental biologist C. H. Waddington conceived epigenetics in the 1940s as a form of cellular memory that allows cells to maintain and transmit alternative states through an organism’s lifetime. Expanding on Waddington, since the early 2000s, molecular epigenetics has focused on changes to chromatin structure (the macromolecule in which DNA is folded) by which genomic functioning is altered in response to environmental and developmental signals without changes to DNA sequences. This chapter has a twofold function. Firstly, I offer a review of twenty-first-century studies in the epigenetics of memory showing how they are situated vis-à-vis the original Waddingtonian meaning of epigenetics. Secondly, I reflect on the significance of epigenetics for an understanding of biological life as always entangled with and permeated by social and cultural forces. An analysis of epigenetic memories reveals the profound situatedness and stratification of human embodiment and the need to rethink the nexus of biology, temporality and agency beyond dualistic assumptions of genes vs. society that have characterized some acrimonious debates of the twentieth century.