Very General Introduction to Epigenetics

This introduction to "epigenetics" is only a very initial introduction to this important topic. What genetic studies have discovered that some important genetic information is not encoded in the cell quite the way we had thought. We had been pretty firmly committed to virtually all genetic information being transmitted through the DNA inside the cell, but epigenetics is a study of genetics that has revealed that environmental factors can affect the individual and that information can be passed on and could affect later generations and is not coded in the DNA. The very important part of this new research is that it may reveal how some tendencies to get some diseases can be passed on to future generations, but may skip generations. In addition there are links to the age of an individual exposed to specific environmental factors.

Consider how a cell divides, When it first splits into two cells, both cells are pretty similar. On the next division the two cells don't divide into four exact replicas because gravity pulls larger and heavier granular material in the cells toward the bottom of the two cells. The two cells becomes four, but the bottom two cells are virtually the same and the top two are virtually the same, but the top cells are not exactly like the bottom cells. So cells are changed by the very fact that gravity affects the process of cellular division. If a cell can be affected by the affect of gravity, it should come as no surprize that cells could be affected by a wide range of environmental factors. Researchers also have done extensive studies of how cells change from a rather general type of cell into very specific cells. This is usually called cellular differentiation. The way cells differentiate is vital to our understanding of the development of any organism. Stem cells can become a wide variety of specialized cells. For a short time the stem cells final specialization is not "set in stone", so it can be changed. Because of epigenetics we now have another direction of study that could make the process of specialization more understandable. We are using stem cells because they change into other types of cells much more easily, but epigenetics may allow us to use cells other than stem cells in a similar way.

Researchers have found that exposure to environmental factors such as famine may not affect the initial generation exposed, but the exposure could affect individuals one or two generations down the line. We are learning that living a healthy life today may help a future generation in our lineage. These studies could have dramatic implications on any extended space exploration where we could have a large number of people on a space station or in a large habitat on the moon. If people were to have children under such radically different environmental conditions it could easily affect the offspring, but now we know that it could also affect offspring in a "skip" generation.

Some of our understanding of Epigenetics has been the result of our studies of twins, Research in this field is leading to the possibility of treating some diseases in a radical new way and this includes the treatment of some cancers. Essentially researchers have found that some genetic information can be turned on or off. If a disease is the result of genetic information that is "turned on" by some yet unknown factor, then that same genetic information may be able to be "turned off" by some type of Epigenetics therapy. Look for much more on this topic.