scary epigenetics....you suffer because your grandad smoked?

I posted somethings earlier this year after seeing a talk by Nesa Carey.  

Here is a story I spotted the other day, which talks about some of the implications of this areas of discovery.  

new research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Medicine demonstrates that nicotine exposure also causes asthma in the smoker's grandchildren

The report points to an open access study:

Perinatal nicotine exposure induces asthma in second generation offspring

ConclusionsGermline epigenetic marks imposed by exposure to nicotine during pregnancy can become permanently programmed and transferred through the germline to subsequent generations, a ground-breaking finding that shifts the current asthma paradigm, opening up many new avenues to explore.

For those who are parents, or wil be,  this gives an awesome responsibility - your actions will be having  an impact on your children and grandchildren that you cannot even understand.  That is positive and negative.