Social genomics

Social genomics is the field of research that examines why and how different social factors and processes (e.g., social stress, conflict, isolation, attachment, etc.) affect the activity of the genome. Social genomics as a field is very young (< 20 years old) and was spurred by the scientific understanding that the expression of genes to their gene products, though not the DNA sequence itself, is affected by the external environment. Social genomics researchers have thus examined the role of social factors (e.g. isolation, rejection) on the expression of individual genes, or more commonly, clusters of many genes (i.e. gene profiles, or gene programs).