Situating Environmental Epigenetics: Tracing Field-Specific Configuration of Environmental Epigenetics in Three Biomedical Research Fields

• In Event: Innovation, Biocapital and the Making of Post-Genomic Medicine - II

Abstract

This talk presents first results of an unfolding research project which traces how research approaches from environmental epigenetics are currently adopted and adapted in three biomedical fields. Epigenetics explores changes in gene expression that do not result from genetic mutation, but from chemical modifications upon the DNA. In recent years, such epigenetic modifications have been found to change in response to environmental stimuli – such as toxins, nutrition or stress – giving rise to research approaches summarized as ‘environmental epigenetics’. In STS, environmental epigenetics has been received with both enthusiasm and skepticism. While it has been welcomed as a possible ‘new biology’ that acknowledges the role of the social for biological processes and might allow social justice perspectives to inform biological research, simultaneously, concerns have been raised that it might create novel forms of biological determinism that center around the epigenetic mark. In this project, we assume that questions regarding the epistemic and biopolitical character of environmental epigenetics cannot be answered with regard to environmental epigenetics as such, but must be explored as effects of its specific enactments in situated research contexts. Based on initial empirical research, such as literature analyses and interviews with researchers, we illustrate the project’s distinctly comparative approach by juxtaposing how environmental epigenetics has come to matter within environmental toxicology and the psychopathology of mood and anxiety. We show that in each setting, environmental epigenetics has become a distinct “epistemic thing” (Rheinberger 1997) with different socio-political attachments sites.

Authors

• Ruth Müller, MCTS TU München

• Sophia Rossmann, Technical University Munich (TUM)

• Georgia Samaras, MCTS TU München