EPIGENETICS

Epigenetics is one of the hottest fields in the life sciences. It’s a phenomenon
with wide-ranging, powerful effects on many aspects of biology, and
enormous potential in human medicine. As such, its ability to fill in some of
the gaps in our scientific knowledge is mentioned everywhere from academic
journals to the mainstream media to some of the less scientifically rigorous
corners of the Internet.

 Wondering why identical twins aren’t actually, well,

identical? Epigenetics!
 Want to blame your parents for something that doesn’t seem to be
genetic? Epigenetics!
 Got a weird result from an experiment that doesn’t seem to make
sense? Epigenetics!
 Want to think yourself healthy? That’s not epigenetics! (Sorry ‘bout
that).

But what exactly is epigenetics – and does the reality live up to the hype?

The basics

Epigenetics is essentially additional information layered on top of the

sequence of letters (strings of molecules called A, C, G, and T) that makes up
DNA.

If you consider a DNA sequence as the text of an instruction manual that

explains how to make a human body, epigenetics is as if someone's taken a
pack of highlighters and used different colours to mark up different parts of
the text in different ways. For example, someone might use a pink highlighter
to mark parts of the text that need to be read the most carefully, and a blue
highlighter to mark parts that aren't as important.

There are different types of epigenetic marks, and each one tells the proteins
in the cell to process those parts of the DNA in certain ways. For example,
DNA can be tagged with tiny molecules called methyl groups that stick to
some of its C letters. Other tags can be added to proteins called histones that
are closely associated with DNA. There are proteins that specifically seek out
and bind to these methylated areas, and shut it down so that the genes in that
region are inactivated in that cell. So methylation is like a blue highlighter
telling the cell "you don't need to know about this section right now."

Methyl groups and other small molecular tags can attach to different
locations on the histone proteins, each one having a different effect. Some
tags in some locations loosen the attachment between the DNA and the
histone, making the DNA more accessible to the proteins that are responsible
for activating the genes in that region; this is like a pink highlighter telling
the cell "hey, this part's important". Other tags in other locations do the
opposite, or attract other proteins with other specific functions. There are
epigenetic marks that cluster around the start points of genes; there are marks
that cover long stretches of DNA, and others that affect much shorter regions;

Even though every cell in your body starts off with the same DNA sequence,
give or take a couple of letters here and there, the text has different patterns
of highlighting in different types of cell – a liver cell doesn't need to follow
the same parts of the instruction manual as a brain cell. But
the really interesting thing about epigenetics is that the marks aren’t fixed in
the same way the DNA sequence is: some of them can change throughout
your lifetime, and in response to outside influences. Some can even be
inherited, just like some highlighting still shows up when text is photocopied.

"More research is needed"

Epigenetics research continues apace in labs investigating a dazzling variety

of topics.

This is a field that’s guaranteed to keep generating headlines and catching the
public’s interest. The apparent ability of epigenetics to fill some pretty
diverse gaps in our understanding of human health and disease, and to
provide scientific mechanisms for so many of our lived experiences, makes it
very compelling, but we do need to be careful not to over-interpret the
evidence we’ve collected so far. And we certainly need to be highly sceptical
of anyone claiming that we can consciously change our epigenomes in
specific ways through the power of thought.