The plastic human - ePrints Soton

Gluckman, Peter D. and Hanson, Mark A. (2010) The plastic human. Infant and Child Development, 19, 21-26. (doi:10.1002/icd.650).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Developmental plasticity is the process by which environmental cues in early life influence the nature of the phenotype. The near-universal capacity for plasticity evolved because it allows the organism to maintain or enhance its fitness, either at the time of the challenge (by allowing survival) or later in life. Importantly, developmental plasticity operates over the normative range of environmental experiences. Studies of the long-term consequences of different developmental environments for human health and disease have shown that growth restriction (altered birth size) is not a prerequisite for altered disease risk and that there is a graded effect across the whole range of fetal milieu. Thus, the emerging consensus is that fetal programming reflects the maladaptive consequences of developmental plasticity, arising from discordance between the triggering and later environments. Such discordance is increasingly likely, both because of demographic shifts and because of the rapid change in the nutritional and social environments experienced after weaning.

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