We are also only equally coming around to the thinking that the makeup of bacteria in the stomach has a bigger impact in area's that we have never invisanged before.

hormones are proteins encoded by genes that affect gene transcription. Many hormones respond to entirely internal signals. So, much of what hormones do have a root cause in genomes (but, there are definitely limits on that statement).

That's an odd comment since hormones are the result of gene expression.

Not necessarily, for example, the very thing in the article title - high levels of oestrogens in the womb - is about hormone levels not caused by expression of your genes but influenced by outside environment.

An outside environment which shares ~50% of your genes, though.

Nothing genetic about lead in the air or in paint, or hormones in your beef. Nothing genetic about alcohol or cigarette exposure in the womb. Or random thugs terrifying your parents, putting your pregnant mom through waves of fight-or-flight hormone spikes.

Yeah, but they are more precisely a function of environment. Diet, stress even sunlight affect hormone levels in a given individual.

They are usually, but you don't get much variation without issues that are not genetic that affect hormones. Like hormone producing tumours.

IMO gene expression is very different than what layman like myself mean when we talk about our genes.

OK, fair point.

In order for genes to have any impact on an organism they need to be expressed. And it's expression that creates the enzymes that create hormones. So it's hard to separate those two.

Environmental exposure can change how genes are expressed and thus hormones.

But hormones are one of the things that affect gene expression in turn. There aren’t really many straightforward causal relationships in biology.

That's true, but the hormones wouldn't changes gene expression unless it was already encoded in the genes.