Dr. Moshe Szyf is a pioneer in the field of epigenetics, the study of how living things reprogram their genome in response to social factors like stress and lack of food. His research suggests that biochemical signals passed from mothers to offspring tell the child what kind of world they’re going to live in, changing the expression of genes. Moshe says that “DNA isn’t just a sequence of letters; it’s not just a script…DNA is a dynamic movie in which our experiences are being written.” Szyf’s lab has proposed three decades ago that DNA methylation is a prime therapeutic target in cancer and other diseases and has postulated and provided the first set of evidence that the ‘social environment’ early in life can alter our DNA methylation launching the emerging field of ‘social epigenetics’.
Connect with Moshe
Dr. Szyf’s McGill University page
Moshe’s TED Talk