3 ms·
Trying to reconstruct the title Found a mutation in spermatozoa that can be used as a flag for higher probability of having autistic children. Correct?
by pvaldes 5y ago
Trying to reconstruct the title
Found a mutation in spermatozoa that can be used as a flag for higher probability of having autistic children. Correct?
- Accujack 5y agoMore like "Found: an epigenetic change in sperm that seems to correlate with genes we know are involved in autism".
- tomp 5y agoMethilation isn't a mutation. It's epigenetics - (potentially) persistent / heritable changes in phenotype (expressed genes) outside of genetic code (DNA). It's used for many things, e.g. turning on/off specific genes in somatic cells, repairing DNA (when DNA is copied, the old strand is methilated; so you know how to fix any differences between old and new strand), and more recently, for measuring aging (Horvath epigenetic clock).
- pvaldes 5y agoWe can substitute a mutation as a synonym for modification here then. It doesn't matter and would be still more clear. We could say that the string of letters is not modified but the letters in the DNA string are "in cursive" now, so when we read the text we understand a different thing.