The newspaper ‘Saint-Petersburg Vedomosti’ published an interview with E.L. Patkin, Head of the Laboratory of Molecular Cytogenetics of Mammal Development, Department of Molecular Genetics of the Federal State Budgetary Scientific Institution ‘IEM’. Topics of conversation: the role of epigenetics in maintaining human health; SARS-Cov-2 – what is the reason for its high contagiousness; lactoferrin — its effect on the normalization of the epigenome.