First Environmental Epigenomics Meeting - 20th Anniversary
28 December 2025: At the turn of the millennium, three epigenetic papers were particularly instrumental in ushering in the era of environmental epigenomics (Jirtle, 2025). Firstly, in 2003, the agouti mouse study demonstrated that maternal dietary methyl supplementation (i.e. folic acid, vitamin B12, choline, and betaine) significantly increased the number of healthy, brown offspring by altering the epigenome at the Avy locus (Waterland and Jirtle, 2003). This finding provided a plausible mechanism to explain how environmental exposures during embryonic development could alter disease susceptibility in adulthood. Secondly, in 2004, postnatal maternal licking and grooming behavior in rats was shown to produce in the offspring stable DNA methylation and chromatin structure alterations in the promoter of the glucocorticoid receptor, Nr3c1, in the hippocampus of the brain (Weaver et al., 2004). This provided a mechanism for the long-term effects of postnatal maternal care on gene expression and behavior in the offspring. Thirdly, in 2005, evidence was provided that the endocrine-disrupting agents, vinclozolin and methoxychlor, induce transgenerationally inherited alterations that lead to decreased male fertility and spermatogenic capacity by reprogramming the male germ line epigenetically (Anway et al., 2005).
Because of these pioneering studies two decades ago, the era of 'environmental epigenomics' was ushered into the consciousness of both scientists and the general public. The first meeting on this research subject was at a joint NIEHS/Duke University conference that Fred Tyson and I co-organized at the Washington Duke Inn in Durham, NC in November of 2005, making this year the twentieth anniversary of the 'Woodstock' gathering for this field of research.
With the subsequent identification of the imprint control regions (ICRs) that regulate the expression of imprinted genes - the human imprintome (Jima et al., 2022 and Jirtle, 2025) and the correlated regions of systemic interindividual variations (CoRSIVs) (Gunasekara et al., 2019), the development of the human imprintome array (Carreras-Gallo et al., 2024), and the ability to now perform superior high-throughput DNA methylation sequencing, as Winston Churchill stated, we are at the 'end of the beginning' of the era of environmental epigenetics research.
In the future, we should literally be able to readily determine the importance of ICRs and CoRSIVs in the pathogenesis of all chronic diseases and behavioral disorders that plague humans. Moreover, we may be able to ameliorate some of these negative health effects through the modification of our diet (Aronica et al. 2025).
