The epigenetics revolution
"Epigenetics can potentially revolutionize our understanding of the structure and behavior of biological life on Earth. It explains why mapping an organism's genetic code is not enough to determine how it develops or acts and shows how nurture combines with nature to engineer biological diversity. Surveying the twenty-year history of the field while also highlighting its latest findings and innovations, this volume provides a readily understandable introduction to the foundations of epigenetics. Nessa Carey, a leading epigenetics researcher, connects the field's arguments to such diverse phenomena as how ants and queen bees control their colonies; why tortoiseshell cats are always female; why some plants need cold weather before they can flower; and how our bodies age and develop disease. Reaching beyond biology, epigenetics now informs work on drug addiction, the long-term effects of famine, and the physical and psychological consequences of childhood trauma. Carey concludes with a discussion of the future directions for this research and its ability to improve human health and well-being."--Amazon.com.
Stats for nerds
2recommend
4mentions
4people
2012–2025years
50% recommend50% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Interesting. I may be biased in the other direction after reading "The Epigenetics Revolution" and "Junk DNA" by Nessa Carey.
ENCODE is such an amazing project! Also, thanks for your research on non coding DNA.
- Epigenetics is a very interesting area, and I expect it to increase in importance following the ENCODE project that just came out.
The NYTimes article is a bit strange, though, trying to politicize epigenetics through the "mommy wars". The article also muddles the difference between genetic issues due to aging fathers and epigenetic issues. The recent Icelandic study links mutations in sperm from aging fathers to autism and schizophrenia, which is genetic (the mutations show up in genome sequencing), so it's basically irrelevant to the article's epigenetic thesis. The NYTimes article mentions a theory that maybe epigenetic regulation is reducing DNA repair and causing mutations, but that's a pretty tenuous connection.
It's silly to turn this into a "blame game", but it is interesting that males and females contribute different types of genetic errors: females typically introduce chromosome errors, while males introduce DNA mutations. 20% of human eggs have the wrong number of chromosomes, compared with 3-4% of sperm. A cell has to split the chromosomes twice in meiosis to form a gamete, which is a difficult process where a lot can go wrong. Eggs sit around potentially for decades and then need to twice split properly, and this becomes much more error-prone with age. The first split happens at ovulation, and the second at fertilization (which is much later than I'd expect). These errors in chromosome separation are the leading cause of miscarriage and mental retardation. On the other hand, males are the main source of DNA mutations, since sperm are constantly being created, and each round of DNA replication has a chance to introduce errors. [Reference: Molecular Biology of the Cell, chapter 21, which is an interesting book]
Last week I read the book "The Epigenetics Revolution", which I recommend as it gives a good description of epigenetics. http://www.amazon.com/The-Epigenetics-Revolution-Understandi... (non-affiliate link)
- I read it in a book called The Epigenetics Revolution, so I'm going to stick with what the author wrote there.
- Its closer to a config file / internal functions that modify the state variables of a system instead of generating objects. The junk DNA doesn't explicitly get read, but it interacts in nonlinear ways with the executable "text" portion of the DNA.
Also disclaimer: My only knowledge of this is from Nessa Carey's The Epigenetics Revolution and some additional online reading.
