Why I longed to return to a place I’d never been

Today’s post deals with epigenetics and the idea that certain types of “memories” can be encoded somehow into our DNA.

Originally posted on my Tumblr blog in 2020

Ever since I was little, I have felt an affinity for England (and the U.K. and Ireland as a whole) and Canada. On my first trip to Niagara Falls (the Canadian side), I felt strangely at peace, even among all the tourists. Toronto held a similar pull, as did London on my first visit in 1986. But I never had an experience quite like the one I had when I first walked from the church in Little Catalina, NL, where my grandfather had just been buried, to the cliffs overlooking the sea. I felt...like I belonged there. I felt home.

Trust me when I tell you, if you are not a scientifically minded person, trying to “bone up” on your epigenetics is going to be no easy task. I have downloaded dozens of scientific journal articles, but I had to start from a more approachable angle: translated science, written by science writers for a more general audience.

Epigenetics

Let’s start with what epigenetics is. “Epi” is Greek for “on top of” or “outside of.” It is used in this context to mean “in addition to.” And you probably already know what genetics means. To put something I barely understand into lay terms, epigenetics are changes in a living being’s genetic expression (how we take our DNA and make it into ourselves) that are not caused by actual mutations to the DNA sequence. The discipline is relatively young, although, as James R. Howe (2018) writes, the idea of epigenetics has been around since ancient Buddhism, Hinduism, and Greek philosophy. And it offers possible explanations for long traditions held by many Native peoples.

The concept of “genetic memory” was born in 1921, according to Howe, although “it could only be tested after major advances in behavioral and biochemical techniques in the 1950s.” Two scientists top the list of major names in this era: James McConnell and Georges Unger, both at American universities. Unfortunately, their research was later found to be flawed, and “the paradigm of genetic memory was stillborn” (Howe, 2018).

According to Howe, though, the germ of genetic memory experienced a miraculous regeneration with a 2014 study by Brian Dias and Kerry Ressler that found mice trained to fear the odor of cherry blossoms could pass on that fear to their offspring. More research in biology and psychology has followed, and early indications are that, yes, indeed, it may be possible for human beings to transmit certain types of “memories” (not episodic) through what scientists believe is the process involved in epigenetics.

But perhaps the most interesting study for someone like me who is so fascinated with the idea of place and memory is a study from the University of Michigan that studied Tibetan chickens’ genetic adaptation to two different living environments, one highland and one lowland.

In this study, researchers distinguish between two types of changes in the organism’s phenotypes: “plastic” changes, which change gene activity but don’t rewrite the genetic code, and actual genetic mutations, which modify the sequence of letters in the DNA code itself. To summarize, the chickens originated in the lowlands but were taken to the Plateau to be raised there. As the generations of chickens adapted to the highland life, some genetic mutations took place. But when these Plateau-bred chickens’ offspring were later returned to the lowlands, the “plastic” changes to their genetic activity quickly switched the DNA coding back to the “preferred” condition for living in the lowlands.

In other words, the chickens were “meant” to be lowland chickens, and they made do while they were up high, but somehow, their DNA was able to keep some coding “temporarily” switched on or off to adapt to what they surely must have hoped (genetically speaking) was a temporary living condition.

Is the sea in my DNA?

Now, I’m no chicken. (This is true in several ways, not in others.) I am a homo sapiens sapiens, with all the innate sentience that goes along with that species/subspecies. But that’s not to say I am incapable of having plastic changes (epigenetic?) or genetic mutations. Just because I am not aware of these things happening, that doesn’t mean they aren’t. So, what if my generations-long genetic condition was meant to be living by the ocean? My entire maternal line traces back hundreds of years on the Newfoundland coast; before that, they are mainly on the south and east coasts of England.

What if the sea is in my DNA?

What if that’s why, ever since childhood, I have had both a reverence for—and a healthy fear of—the ocean?

How many ancestral family members have I lost to the codfishery and other water pursuits?

Could those traumas be imprinted in my epigenetic wiring somehow? Looks like the current scientific opinion is “yes.”