For research in biology and psychology specifically, where does the field of epigenetics seem to be going?
You being a psychology student, I can't interpret what you wanted to know with this unspecific question. If you have something in your mind, express it and you might find some answers. To understand the epigenetic thing in depth, first the solid understanding about the genome, genetics and expression profiles is needed.
To say something about your question, epigenetics is a wide field and it is just the beginning what you in the research these days. Talking specifically about human epigenetics, these are large number of traits and characters influenced and governed by epigenetic changes but they are not yet decoded because genome is not the root cause of it, but its just the epigenetic modifications.
@ Abhijeet Singh
My question stands: I am just interested in where the field of epigenetic research is going. I already have a base of knowledge on the subject, and even if I didnt have this base of knowledge, being able to explain something in a simplified form is very much appreciated outside of the scientific community.
Michael Osfeld Thats what I tried to tell you, in the second para about where in which direction epigenetics is progressing, but you seem to ignore it.
Abhijeet Singh
My bad, the RG app on my phone did not show the second paragraph for some reason. You say that epigenetics is a wide field, do you see this field expanding in coming years? Does it seem to lean to any side of developmental or lifetime factors such as childhood disease, trauma, or famine?
Michael Osfeld As we are moving towards better understanding of genome structure and its regulation, certainly we will broaden our scope for the better application of the epigenetic research, however, epigenetic is more or less a regulatory phenomenon, so it will progress slowly as compared to genomics studies. Epigenetic studies would be play important role in the understanding of certain traits which has not been understood completely in human as well as other organisms. So as you say it will have its influence in "disease, trauma, or famine", but epigenetic studies require a lot of in-depth information from genomics, genetics etc. So its studies would be limited (as compared to the progress in others) for a while.
Keep reading on Epigenetics, its not like that you are a psychology student, so you may not interested on epigenetics, so continue reading the literature and the available information on this especial area. May be you find out an interlinked.
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