By Kelly Glass — 2020
There are many factors at play when it comes to your weight, and genetics is certainly one of them.
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Studying twins has long offered insight into the interplay of nature and nurture. Epigenetics is the next frontier.
Scientists say they have finally assembled the full genetic blueprint for human life, adding the missing pieces to a puzzle nearly completed two decades ago.
A new law warns biohackers not to edit their genes at home.
The ability to edit the genetic code of a human being in vivo may have once seemed a far-off fantasy. But the advent of CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology, which saw Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier win the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, has made it very much a reality.
For all the hype, fear and misinformation that surrounds the application of gene editing, there is an equally powerful technology that offers much the same in potential benefit. This technology, epigenetics, is a natural process that has gone largely unremarked by consumers.
Epigenetics is the study of biological mechanisms that will switch genes on and off, to be put as a simplified definition. What does that mean? Well, if you are new to this whole thing, we first need a quick crash course in biochemistry and genetics before learning exactly what is epigenetics.
It’s not uncommon to read headlines about the “epigenetic revolution” and hear claims that epigenetics overthrows our understanding of evolution. So what exactly is epigenetics? How does it work? And why does it matter?
Most genetic studies completely ignore the science of epigenetics, which is how the environment actually turns certain genes on or off.
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Scientists are turning their focus to an emerging field: epigenetics, the study of how people’s experience and environment affect the function of their genes.