Epigenetics, nature vs nurture's worst nightmare, or why your

[HysteryDiagnosis]

DNA is not the final word on your wellness or your longevity.


http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1951968,00.html




How to Make a Better Mouse
As momentous as epigenetics sounds, the chemistry of at least one of its mechanisms is fairly simple. Darwin taught us that it takes many generations for a genome to evolve, but researchers have found that it takes only the addition of a methyl group to change an epigenome. A methyl group is a basic unit in organic chemistry: one carbon atom attached to three hydrogen atoms. When a methyl group attaches to a specific spot on a gene — a process called DNA methylation — it can change the gene's expression, turning it off or on, dampening it or making it louder.
(See more about DNA.)

The importance of DNA methylation in altering the physical characteristics of an organism was proposed in the 1970s, yet it wasn't until 2003 that anyone experimented with DNA methylation quite as dramatically as Duke University oncologist Randy Jirtle and one of his postdoctoral students, Robert Waterland, did. That year, they conducted an elegant experiment on mice with a uniquely regulated agouti gene — a gene that gives mice yellow coats and a propensity for obesity and diabetes when expressed continuously. Jirtle's team fed one group of pregnant agouti mice a diet rich in B vitamins (folic acid and vitamin B12). Another group of genetically identical pregnant agouti mice got no such prenatal nutrition.

The B vitamins acted as methyl donors: they caused methyl groups to attach more frequently to the agouti gene in utero, thereby altering its expression. And so without altering the genomic structure of mouse DNA — simply by furnishing B vitamins — Jirtle and Waterland got agouti mothers to produce healthy brown pups that were of normal weight and not prone to diabetes.


Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1951968-2,00.html#ixzz10ZHHO4dd

[BrklynLiberal]

1. Oh goodie..Maybe The next Senator from Delaware will actually see monkeys turn into

humans in front of her eyes...

[HysteryDiagnosis]

4. Ahhhhhhh no, another fine quote from the 4th page of the

article:
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1951968-4,00.html

Remember the Human Genome Project? Completed in March 2000, the project found that the human genome contains something like 25,000 genes; it took $3 billion to map them all. The human epigenome contains an as yet unknowable number of patterns of epigenetic marks, a number so big that Ecker won't even speculate on it. The number is certainly in the millions. A full epigenome map will require major advances in computing power. When completed, the Human Epigenome Project (already under way in Europe) will make the Human Genome Project look like homework that 15th century kids did with an abacus.

But the potential is staggering. For decades, we have stumbled around massive Darwinian roadblocks. DNA, we thought, was an ironclad code that we and our children and their children had to live by. Now we can imagine a world in which we can tinker with DNA, bend it to our will. It will take geneticists and ethicists many years to work out all the implications, but be assured: the age of epigenetics has arrived.

[Hannah Bell]

2. amazing how time manages to spin it to benefit pharma & the ruling class pov:

We all know that you can truncate your own life if you smoke or overeat, but it's becoming clear that those same bad behaviors can also predispose your kids — before they are even conceived — to disease and early death.

The good news: scientists are learning to manipulate epigenetic marks in the lab, which means they are developing drugs

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1951968-2,00.html#ixzz10ZInWLOh


that's a bullshit take on epigenetics.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

3. I understood the differences in the mice was due to simple b

vitamins, who gives a crap what big pharma "thinks" they can hoodwink us into.

[BrklynLiberal]

5. Yeah... Nutrition can affect evolution...Is that news to anyone...

[Iterate]

6. I can't do Time.

Sorry, it's like getting a bad plate of clams and never being able to face them again.

Here are a few primers, but there are dozens more good ones, and even the scientific literature isn't that difficult.

From Nature, 2002
Time to take epigenetic inheritance seriously
http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v10/n11/full/5200901a.html

Transcript from a Nova broadcast, 2007. I think the show might even be online.
Ghost in Your Genes
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3413_genes.html

From Scientific American, 2005:
Identical Twins Exhibit Differences in Gene Expression
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=identical-twins-exhibit-d

First Ant Genomes Promise Insight into Epigenetics and Longevity
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=first-ant-genomes-epigenetics

I don't know if they mentioned it, but methylation has been implicated in trauma and fetal alcohol syndrome, and de-methylation treatments for some cancers have been successful in trials.