The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology Is Rewriting Our Undersstanding genetics, disease, and imheretence

By Nessa Carey

We start out with Audrey Hepurn. She was a survivor.of the "Dutch Hunger Winter" which was at the close of WWII. Starvation was rampant that year and the result was low birth weight babies that stayed low, hence her dimimutive stature.

What is.epigenetics I hear you ask " Whenever two genetically identical individuals are non-identical in some way we can measure, this is called epigenetics."

Althought two actors are handed indentical scripts for a movie, no two actors will be the same in execution. This is epigenetics. This is at.the heart of nature v nurture.

Waddington’s epigenetic landscape. This is the.physical representation of the normal course of cell differentation. Cells theoretically travel downhill to the bottom and stay there (the bottom representing a differentiated cell). What science seeks to do is theoretically make it roll back up hill.

That process ie " how to take a somatic cell and use the four factors – Oct4, Sox2, Klf4 and c-Myc – to turn it into a pluripotent cell," is patented by the way. Yes the very creation of life is to be.owned by the highest bidder. Welcome to the brave new financial world.

So Dr Bird has proved, in mice anyway (see his mouse on YouTube) that certain genes can be.switched back on. The real story is that when the gene is switched back on the disease.process is reversed. All that developmental time is not wasted the patient, in this case the mouse, reverts right back to what a normal.healthy mouse does at this age. The gene MeCp2 is what causes Retts syndrome in children. The hope.is.that Dr Birds' treatment will be able.to reverse Retts syndrome in children.

I needed some work done in the frontyard so naturally I called Waddington's Epigenetic Landscapers. They did a good job but now the bushes all seemed to have migrated down to the bottom of the driveway and I dont know how to get them to come back up the hill to the

Epigenetics is helping to solve the age old question of inheritance vs evolution. Lamarck theorized that we develop traits useful to our life and pass those on to the next generation. This is his "Theory of Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics" published in 1801. Darwin proposed that variations are continuous and random. And when a variation is advantageous the lucky recepient is more likley tp do better in his environment and have more offspring with the new trait.
This is the argument that epigenetics is able to explore. Lamarck! Darwin! Stop! Your both right. Old.research has proven the Darwinian theory to death. But new research is showing that yes Lamarck was right too and sttetchy necked giraffes can alter their DNA in one lifetime and.not only pass it on to their children but in some cases to their grandchildren.

Evolution can be boiled down to one question, "Do the chicks dig it?" Cause if they do, it stays. If a.variation causes me to grow a six foot red flag out pf my rectum and the girls find that sexy? It stays. It's the same reason why yesterday in B&N I sat next to a whole.table.full of young boys with Justin Beiber hair. We tend to do what the chicks.dig.