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Going to play devil's advocate: the epigenome is changed in methylation, as explained in the article, and for a NYTimes article title, "changes our DNA" is goin
by djokkataja 12y ago
Going to play devil's advocate: the epigenome is changed in methylation, as explained in the article, and for a NYTimes article title, "changes our DNA" is going to be much more comprehensible to the general public than "changes our epigenome". "Tweaked" is actually a very good word for what happens--none of the base pairs are rewritten, but epigenetic changes can significantly affect the organism, even to the point of being passed on to offspring.[1]
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenerational_epigenetics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenerational_epigenetics
- cant-be-serious 12y agoMechanism and whether if transgenerational epigenetics happens in human is still unclear: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24679529 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24679529
- skywhopper 12y agoIndeed. Given that this research showed these particular studied effects were specific to particular muscles that were being exercised, it seems unlikely to transfer through entirely different set of cells and into offspring. In fact, my uneducated first guess would be that the different methylation patterns are related to the actual buildup in strength, which itself would require some way of coding for the expression of certain genes differently in one set of muscle cells than in another.
- biehl 12y agoBut with indications that it happens http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867414014366 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867414...