Worth noting is that the median age was 58, and the minimum age was 16. Apparently there were no differences pre-post menopause, but an interesting question is whether gene expression, splicing, and regulatory networks are initiated via external factors in early youth, or in development via more automatic mechanisms.
There might be reasons this isn't the case, but it is apparently true that maternal behavior influences which parent you express genes from in mice (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20616232). I'm not sure (and not qualified to answer) whether similar mechanisms are at play here, but it does suggest that evolution has found a way to use early experience to modulate genetic expression. That might be the case here, too.
There might be reasons this isn't the case, but it is apparently true that maternal behavior influences which parent you express genes from in mice (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20616232). I'm not sure (and not qualified to answer) whether similar mechanisms are at play here, but it does suggest that evolution has found a way to use early experience to modulate genetic expression. That might be the case here, too.