Our previous studies showed that, in response to various environmental factors, including heat shock, psychological stress, inflammatory cytokines, and pathogen infection, the stress-responsive epigenetic regulator Drosophila ATF2 (dATF2) and the vertebrate ortholog ATF7 are phosphorylated by p38 and released from the chromatin, resulting in a reduction in histone H3K9 tri- and di-methylation (H3K9me3/2), which can be transmitted to the subsequent generation in some instances (Maekawa et al. 2010; Seong et al. 2011; Seong et al. 2012; Yoshida et al. 2015). The gene discussed is ATF7; the disease is infection.