title: The plasticity of development: how knowledge of epigenetics may advance understanding of eating disorders.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To depict the processes through which animals and human beings engage their environment in continuously evolving states of conflict and cooperation.
  
  
  METHODS
  Descriptive literature review.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Life history outcomes are more relative than they are absolute. Genetic variations play a crucial role, but heavily influencing behavioral outcomes, psychopathology included, are external cues that epigenetically remodel DNA along experience-dependent signaling pathways. The result is phenotypes that either optimize adjustment, or constrain it.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Knowledge of epigenetic mechanisms may help shed new light on the origin of maturational phenotypes underlying eating disorders and why adjusting treatments to these realities warrants our attention.
authors: Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences, Semel Institute for Neuroscience & Human Behavior, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles; Stewart & Lynda Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital at UCLA, Los Angeles, California.
authors: Michael
authors: M
authors: Strober
authors: Tara
authors: T
authors: Peris
authors: Howard
authors: H
authors: Steiger
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001008:Anxiety Disorders / Q000150:complications; D001724:Birth Weight; D019175:DNA Methylation / Q000235:genetics; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D004781:Environmental Exposure; D044127:Epigenesis, Genetic / Q000235:genetics*; D001068:Feeding and Eating Disorders / Q000235:genetics*; D005260:Female; D059647:Gene-Environment Interaction; D005854:Germ Cells / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D018811:Maternal Exposure; D039382:Maternal Nutritional Physiological Phenomena / Q000502:physiology; D018812:Paternal Exposure; D011247:Pregnancy; D011297:Prenatal Exposure Delayed Effects / Q000235:genetics; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000150:complications
keywords: development; environment; epigenetics; genes