Epigenetics
Time carried a fascinating cover article this week on "Why Your DNA Isn't Your Destiny." It talks about the new science of epigenetics, and how genes can be switched on or off, and the version that gets passed on to offspring reflects the current "switch state" during conception and pregnancy.
Some of the research cited in defense of this theory was done on a remote population in northern Sweden. Ninety-nine people born in 1905 were studied, with the lives of their parents and grandparents studied also. Their life-span was noted, and the cause of death noted as well. Along with this, the agricultural record revealed times of famine so severe that it resulted in starvation for many. At other times, when the harvest was plentiful, people gorged themselves for a period of time. By correlating this data, the astonishing finding was that the people who were children during the gorging times later produced children and grandchildren whose lives were considerably shortened, by about 32 years, when adjusted for socioeconomic variations--compared to those who were the offspring of people who had endured poor harvests and food shortages. In blunt terms, a single winter of gluttonous eating as a youngster initiated "a biological chain of events that would lead one's grandchildren to die decades earlier than their peers did." Epigenetics says that this happened because of inheritable gene alterations as a result of behavioral factors.
After the Sweden research was done, a researcher and geneticist in England came to similar conclusions using data gathered during a longitudinal study involving parents and children. Bygren was the principal Swedish researcher, and Pembrey the British one.
Research into developing drugs that control gene switches shows promise. Imagine, for example, that a tumor-suppressing gene that has been switched off by disease could be switched on again, or a longevity gene could be switched on, after gluttony in an ancestor has switched it off.
The gene-switch theory explains why identical twins do not always develop the same ailments. Something in the environment apparently has made the gene switches behave differently. While the genes are the same, their expression has been altered.
I'm not pinning my hopes on a new drug to reverse whatever physical ailments I have now. But I will continue to take glyconutrient food supplements, and Vitamin B, and all-the-other-good-for-you-stuff I swallow in pill form regularly. I'm also thinking admiringly of the mother I heard of recently who offered her daughter $100.00 if she went through the school year limiting- to-almost-nothing her intake of empty-calorie desserts. The student's children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren might yet rise up and call this mother blessed.
Some of the research cited in defense of this theory was done on a remote population in northern Sweden. Ninety-nine people born in 1905 were studied, with the lives of their parents and grandparents studied also. Their life-span was noted, and the cause of death noted as well. Along with this, the agricultural record revealed times of famine so severe that it resulted in starvation for many. At other times, when the harvest was plentiful, people gorged themselves for a period of time. By correlating this data, the astonishing finding was that the people who were children during the gorging times later produced children and grandchildren whose lives were considerably shortened, by about 32 years, when adjusted for socioeconomic variations--compared to those who were the offspring of people who had endured poor harvests and food shortages. In blunt terms, a single winter of gluttonous eating as a youngster initiated "a biological chain of events that would lead one's grandchildren to die decades earlier than their peers did." Epigenetics says that this happened because of inheritable gene alterations as a result of behavioral factors.
After the Sweden research was done, a researcher and geneticist in England came to similar conclusions using data gathered during a longitudinal study involving parents and children. Bygren was the principal Swedish researcher, and Pembrey the British one.
Research into developing drugs that control gene switches shows promise. Imagine, for example, that a tumor-suppressing gene that has been switched off by disease could be switched on again, or a longevity gene could be switched on, after gluttony in an ancestor has switched it off.
The gene-switch theory explains why identical twins do not always develop the same ailments. Something in the environment apparently has made the gene switches behave differently. While the genes are the same, their expression has been altered.
I'm not pinning my hopes on a new drug to reverse whatever physical ailments I have now. But I will continue to take glyconutrient food supplements, and Vitamin B, and all-the-other-good-for-you-stuff I swallow in pill form regularly. I'm also thinking admiringly of the mother I heard of recently who offered her daughter $100.00 if she went through the school year limiting- to-almost-nothing her intake of empty-calorie desserts. The student's children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren might yet rise up and call this mother blessed.
posted by Mrs. I at
8:05 PM
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