ABSTRACT
Epigenetics is informing us that our everyday experience has a rather immediate impact on genetic expression. D. Dobbs, B. Weinhold, and K. Laland and colleagues, summarising significant epigenetic research, suggest that experience might alter our cellular function almost immediately, not by changing the DNA sequencing of genes, but by altering gene expression. Close examination reveals that their gene expression has been changed often within minutes or hours, by experience, probably an evolutionary advantage for survival in changing circumstances. In any event, the experience of the lack of care or accompaniment seems to heighten our susceptibility to illness via gene suppression of the immune system. "The world passes through us" offers the perspective of our transience, our susceptibility to the influence of experience, our being imprinted by the forces around us—perhaps restoring the sense of our smallness in terms of the universe.
