Book Description

Your genes play an important role in your health, but so do your behaviors and environment, such as what you eat and how physically active you are. Epigenetics is the study of how your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way your genes work. Unlike genetic changes, epigenetic changes are reversible and do not change your DNA sequence, but they can change how your body reads a DNA sequence. Gene expression refers to how often or when proteins are created from the instructions within your genes. While genetic changes can alter which protein is made, epigenetic changes affect gene expression to turn genes "on" and "off." Since your environment and behaviors, such as diet and exercise, can result in epigenetic changes, it is easy to see the connection between your genes and your behaviors and environment. Researchers studying the microscopic roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans recently discovered a set of mutations that extended the worms' normal 2-3 week lifespan by up to 30%. This was exciting, not least because discoveries in animals such as roundworms can sometimes help us understand processes like ageing in humans. This was not the end of the story though, as the researchers found that the descendants of the long-lived roundworms could also live longer than normal, even if they only inherited the non-mutated version of the genes from their parents. This doesn't seem to make sense at first; surely characteristics such as hair colour, height and even how long we or a microscopic worm could potentially live are carried in the DNA sequence of the genes that we inherit from our parents. So how can we solve the conundrum of how the roundworms inherited the long lived characteristic, without inheriting the DNA sequence that initially caused it? The answer is epigenetics. GET YOUR COPY TODAY BY SCROLLING UP AND CLICKING BUY NOW TO GET YOUR COPY TODAY