EPIGENETICS

1. We’re a product of our parents, grandparents, or ancestor from the past, so it’s
not exactly shocking that we share similarities with them.

To say that we are products of our past is certainly valid. There’s no doubt
that many of our conscious and unconscious thoughts, behaviors and actions are
a result of our upbringing and current social environments. The video proves that
we are genetically born with more or less confidence. But the good news is that
our confidence is malleable, and even as adults it can be altered despite our
genetic wiring, pasts and memories. Our DNA contains a record of our ancestors,
but we aren’t a carbon copy of any one of them. When talking about DNA and how
people inherit different traits, we’ll probably come across the term recombination
which is a critical process in human genetics that ultimately helps give us a diverse
genome with bits of DNA from both our ancient and recent ancestors.

2. Epigenetics is a revolution that is going to transform medicine where the prevention

and treatment of disease will be based on your genome and your epigenome,
which is different for every set of cells or tissues in your body.

Epigenetic changes occur throughout our lives, in fact a degree of

adaptability seems to be required for normal human health. One of the most
interesting and controversial aspects of epigenetics is the concept of inheritance.
This suggests that events in our lives can affect our children's development and
health, and possibly our grandchildren's. I think everyone's intrigued by this idea
they're part of a history that isn't just about the genes that they have, their DNA,
that it's also about the experiences that occurred before them to their ancestors. I
think this is such a powerful idea. So, what does the future of epigenetic
medications look like and what are the limiting factors holding back its
advancement? The huge investments from the pharmaceutical industry will allow
research to be expanded to develop therapeutic drugs in new fields. However, it
still remains to be seen if researchers will be able to uncover the epigenetic
mechanisms of disease, to allow more of these treatment options to become a
reality.

3. Diet or stress, be it poor or healthy, can so alter the nature of one's DNA that those
changes can be passed on to the progeny.

What we do know, though, is that the environment and our nutritional intake
plays a crucial role in affecting changes to our DNA which has been demonstrated
by the effects of the Dutch famine. The famine has shown how changes in
epigenetic markers, the “stop” and “go” signals, are inherited, from parent to
offspring and to their offspring in turn. The genes affected are ones that are
important in processing nutrients and are associated with diseases such as
diabetes or are implicated in mental health conditions. Studies in humans are
difficult to control as generally we do not have a reference value for epigenetic
markers before a trauma or stress, so we cannot make easy comparisons. But
what we do know is that women who were pregnant while experiencing extremely
stressful situations, such as the attacks, apparently have passed on this
experience to their child.