In addition to neuroplasticity, ethanol has been shown to affect epigenetic pathways in peripheral tissues such as the gastro-intestinal and biliary systems (Shukla & Lim, 2013). Fetal development may also be under epigenetic regulation (Liu, Balaraman, Wang, Nephew, & Zhou, 2009; Singh, Shiue, Schomberg & Zhou, 2009). Despite four decades of clinical and preclinical research documenting the teratogenicity of ethanol, knowledge of the epigenetic changes induced by prenatal ethanol exposure is only recently emerging. Studies investigating fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) have shown an important role played by the epigenome in the pathogenesis of FASD (Perkins, Lehmann, Lawrence, & Kelly, 2013; Resendiz, Chen, Ozturk, & Zhou, 2013). Interestingly, early ethanol exposure has been shown to affect epigenetic regulation of genes involved in imprinting (Haycock & Ramsay, 2009), neural and glial development (Liu et al., 2009), cell cycle regulation (Hicks, Middleton, & Miller, 2010) and nervous system growth (Zhou et al., 2011).
