The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology is Rewriting Our Understanding of Genetics, Disease and Inheritance

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E. H.: The EMBL is a flexible, proactive structure that adjusts its research priorities on a regular basis. A new research programme is indeed implemented every five years. The current scheme, which runs until 2021, is called Digital Biology and its focus ranges from the functioning of the single cell to that of the entire organism. Once in Heidelberg, my first task will be to think about the next multiyear programme. This will require considerable diplomacy and consultations with our member countries. I would like to point out that the EMBL is independent from the European Union, and that the UK will continue to be part of it after Brexit. Similarly, the foreign researchers who work at our unit in Hinxton, near Cambridge, will not be affected in any way. Without being mawkish, the author is explicit in her regard for the principle players in the epigenetics arena, particularly those whose insight and experimental dexterity pioneered the now burgeoning field. We are introduced to the trailblazing work of John Gurdon, whose early work led to the technology used to create Dolly, the famous and arthritic sheep. We are also afforded a flavour of Gurdon as the 'quintessential older English gentleman', adding a human face to scientific discovery. E. H.: As you know, female mammals carry two X chromosomes inherited from each of their parents, while males have a Y gene from their father and an X gene from their mother. The problem is that the Y chromosome carries very few genes, barely a hundred or so, which are important for masculine sex traits, and the X one carries more than a thousand! To compensate for this imbalance between males and females, a process that inactivates one of the two X chromosomes has therefore developed in females. This is a 100% epigenetic programme that deletes a whole chromosome! From academia to industry with Nessa Carey: Naturejobs Blog". blogs.nature.com . Retrieved 23 January 2017.

The Epigenetics Revolution summary - Blinkist The Epigenetics Revolution summary - Blinkist

We see at play, in principle but increasingly also in practice, an expansion of the concept of responsibility that reaches well beyond the individual and her direct offspring, fostering the materialization of new bonds among generations. Indeed, precisely this aspect has already triggered the attention of bioethicists and legal scholars in reassessing the inter-generational impact of traumatic social events and forecasting how “Epigenetic effects caused by chemicals and other environmental agents may provide a new source of litigation and liability under the common law. Such litigation, especially when it involves second and third generation effects, would raise a number of novel challenges and issues” ( Rothstein et al, 2009). What is interesting here is how the ideas of natural, normal and pure that have shaped the discourse on the genome as a collective resource in need of protection (as “heritage of humanity” characterized by a natural state, in UNESCO's wording) will map upon the epigenome when it comes to so-called intergenerational equity. We see already glimpses of such a one to one translation, as in the recommendation that “each generation should maintain the quality of the human genome and epigenome and pass it on in no worse condition than the present generation received it” (ibid.). In the early 1980s, a scientist called Peter Jones experienced this phenomenon by chance. He was culturing mouse skin cells (fibroblasts) in a Petri dish, to which he had added a molecule, 5-azacytidine. A few days later, to his surprise, cells had appeared in the culture and looked completely different. He initially thought his sample had been contaminated by fungi, but it actually turned out that these cells were myotubes, or muscle cells. The 5-azacytidine had deleted the epigenetic marks of the embryonic cells and reprogrammed them as muscle cells! Searching for how underlying biochemical mechanisms work showed me the fascinating complexity of the molecular world. I first experienced this through Plasmodium's cunning method of recombining var genes to display different proteins on host erythrocytes and avoid detection from the immune system, instantly enticing me to discover more about the hidden intricacies of life. This is a real personal statement written by a student for their university application. It might help you decide what to include in your own. There are lots more examples in our collection of sample personal statements. Nessa Carey's] book combines an easy style with a textbook's thoroughness.... A bold attempt to bring epigenetics to a wide audience. Jonathan Weitzman, Nature

Living organisms never fail to amaze me with their ability to utilise raw materials to fuel and facilitate complex life processes. I am looking forward to uncovering these mechanisms in greater detail and investigating how they can be applied during my degree. Written with much love for the field, and laced with a sense of humour and many amusing but useful analogies, Carey shows herself to be a gifted writer that can make this field accessible for readers new to the topic, while providing a level of depth and detail to satisfy an audience of fellow biologists. I have not yet read Francis’s book Epigenetics: How Environment Shapes Our Genes, published around the same time, but The Epigenetics Revolution is a superb introduction to the topic that answered many of my basic questions. The fact that it remains a useful introduction in such a fast-moving field is a huge achievement. That epigenetics heralds a revolution, what we alluded to in the title echoing a recent popular book ( Carey, 2012), has become such a tacitly accepted notion that it has escaped scrutiny almost entirely. Here we set out to scrutinize the key claims harnessed in support of this revolutionary narrative, in scientific and lay discourses alike, starting from a brief historical and epistemological reappraisal of the various strands of epigenetic thinking, often productively blurred in their distinctions or at times frankly competing with each other.

The Epigenetics Revolution Frontiers | Book review: The Epigenetics Revolution

Pulling together the threads of these imbricated, blurred or at times frankly competing understandings of epigenetics, we can thus posit that its current and unifying thrust is, in a nutshell, the promise to capture the analogical vastness of the‘ environmental signals' recounted above through the digital representation of their molecular responses. If what seemed irreducibly analogic (the social, the environmental, the biographical, the idiosyncratically human) needs to be overlaid onto the digital genome of the informationally ripe age in a dyadic flow of reciprocal reactivity, then it seems that this overlay can succeed only once the analogic is interrogated, parsed and cast into genome-friendly, code-compatible digital representations (RNA, DNA found associated to specific chromatin modifications as in chromatin immunoprecipitation or ChIP, methylated DNAs etc.). In this respect, epigenomic profiles (transcriptomes, chromatin maps and the further bits of living matter that technology is progressively digitizing, from proteomes to metabolomes etc.) are increasingly fulfilling, in today's biology, the role that cellular lineages took on in what Morange refers to as the ‘crisis of molecular biology' in the 1970s and 1980s. Following the spectacular dissection of the genetic code, the challenge to explain development in equally molecular and code-compatible terms proved rapidly a major one. As Morange notes, Bioscience for Industry Strategy Advisory Panel – BBSRC". Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council . Retrieved 22 January 2017. A must-read for every intelligent person who likes to know what is going on in modern science. Graham Storrs, New York Journal of Books If all our cells contain the same genetic material at the level of the DNA sequence, how then do they acquire such differing characteristics, and how are these retained? In other words, what causes cells to develop into specific types? Why do liver cells produce more liver cells when they divide? What stops neurons from growing in our heart? Much of Carey's book is devoted to answering these questions by drawing on the (relatively) new science of epigenetics. Nightingale, Karl P. (20 November 2015). "CHAPTER 1. Epigenetics – What it is and Why it Matters". In Carey, Nessa (ed.). Epigenetics for Drug Discovery. pp.1–19. doi: 10.1039/9781782628484-00001. ISBN 978-1-84973-882-8.Also the more squarely experimental stories are shaping intensely contemporary imaginary, becoming true topoi in the genre: it is the case, for instance, of the switching on and off of the agouti gene in mice (through a methyl-rich maternal diet in gestation) that makes genetically identical offspring look phenotypically different, in coat color but, more importantly, in weight and susceptibility to disease ( Waterland and Jirtle, 2003, 2004). The passage on to the second generation of such an effect also has become emblematic of the idea that not only a mother's but a grandmother's diet can have a profound impact on the health of the grandchildren, an idea popularized in a classic epigenetic slogan such as: “you are what your grandmother ate” ( Pray, 2004). A similar iconic status, especially for its possible implications for social research, has been reached by Meaney's (2001b) study on how variations in maternal behavior of rats alter methylation patterns in the offspring and how these epigenetic alterations affect the next generation, but can be reversed by cross-fostering the pups to more “affective mothers”. Along with the study on glucocorticoid receptor and child abuse ( McGowan et al, 2009), this study has been hailed as evidence of how social experience gets under the skin ( Hyman, 2009), and this metaphor has traveled widely in the social science context and is today reinforced by a parallel notion of epigenetic effects going “into the mind” ( Toyokawa et al, 2012). aSchool of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Nottingham, Law and Social Sciences Building, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD UK. a b "People". Nature Biotechnology. 24 (8): 1038. 1 August 2006. doi: 10.1038/nbt0806-1038. S2CID 219544127.

The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology Is Rewriting The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology Is Rewriting

Abyzov A., et al. Somatic copy number mosaicism in human skin revealed by induced pluripotent stem cells. Nature. 2012; 492 (7429:438�

About the Author

Epigenetics can potentially revolutionize our understanding of the structure and behavior of biological life on Earth. It explains why mapping an organism's genetic code is not enough to determine how it develops or acts and shows how nurture combines with nature to engineer biological diversity. Surveying the twenty-year history of the field while also highlighting its latest findings and innovations, this volume provides a readily understandable introduction to the foundations of epigenetics. Early in the book, Carey describes the molecular mechanisms behind epigenetic phenomena. DNA and histone modifications are rightly afforded much insightful commentary, but the role of non-protein coding RNA molecules is exiled to much later and is not, in my opinion, given sufficient attention. The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology Is Rewriting Our Understanding of Genetics, Disease, and Inheritance

The Epigenetics Revolution Decoding Life: The Epigenetics Revolution

Precisely as a field, however, epigenetics seems to flourish in the remarkable ambiguity of its defining term, with its apparent ability to accommodate – and productively align – a rather diverse range of biological questions and epistemic stances. Echoing Rheinberger's (2003) endorsement for an ‘epistemology of the imprecise', we argue that the ability to entertain multiple understandings of what constitute epigenetic phenomena, and hence multiple ways to secure epigenetic evidence, is foundational to epigenetics' rise, both as a scientific discipline and as a popular phenomenon. Expanding on the notion of ‘boundary object' ( Star and Griesemer, 1989), Rheinberger (2003) framed the gene as a boundary object that molecular biology has been gradually encasing within an eminently flexible boundary concept, thus supporting the claim that ‘boundary objects require boundary concepts' because, “as long as the objects of research are in flux, the corresponding concepts must remain in flux, too”. The same we believe applies today to epigenetics, with its elusiveness ( Dupré, 2012), polysemantic nature ( Morange, 2002, p. 56) and coexistence of multiple accepted meanings for some of its basic features ( Haig, 2004; see also Bird, 2007 and Ptashne, 2007). Forbes, Peter (19 August 2011). "The Epigenetics Revolution by Nessa Carey – review". The Guardian . Retrieved 27 January 2017.

Conflict of Interest Statement

Molecular epigenetics, the ‘next big thing' in the world of bioscience ( Ebrahim, 2012), is a scientific success story that thrives in the ambiguity of its own definition. As to success, there can be little doubt about it: it is enough to look at the 10-fold increase, over the last decade, in the number of publications carrying ‘epigenetic' in their title ( Haig, 2012). Only in 2011 the figure of publications in the field had reached the astonishing amount of several thousands, possibly up to 20000 depending on the search criteria ( Jirtle, 2012), and at any rate has continued to increase since then. Similar efforts aimed at computing the rise of epigenetics in terms of new networks, institutes, conferences, curricula and journals confirm the vertical growth of the field across the full range of academic indicators. maintains the integrity of our chromosomes; regulates the ways the protein-coding genes are expressed; influences how we age and generally introduces incredible degrees of subtlety and flexibility into how we use the relatively small numbers of genes that code for proteins... [and] contributes to all sorts of situations, from the correct control of gene expression in female cells to the regulation of pathways that drive cancer. From Ernest Hemingway's mutant cat to exoneration of the innocent through DNA fingerprinting, junk DNA impacts on an astonishing range of biological phenomena. [34] Epigenetics is a rapidly evolving science that is often only described in scientific literature or textbooks. In “The Epigenetics Revolution”, Nessa Carey eloquently bridges the spheres of academia and scientific journalism ( Carey, 2012). The phrasing “revolution” is a dramatic use of English that effectively portrays a momentous shift in biological thinking. For the novice, it is a good introduction to epigenetics whilst it provides professional readers with a concise summary of historically significant experiments and translational context.