Epigenetics

O’Leary for News’s new series here at Evolution News & Views: A while back, I started a series here called “Science Fictions” that I began by asking a simple question: Why is the space alien understood as science but Bigfoot as mythology? The reason I asked is that, still lacking specimens of either entity, decade after decade, answers are likely to be revealing. Those answers help us see how “science” is understood, allowing us to interpret claims about the origin of the universe, life, human life, and the human mind. In general, naturalism (the idea that inanimate nature somehow created minds) seems to be the guiding principle of enterprises classed as science today, even though the evidence actually goes in Read More ›

From Jewish World Review: Jewish guilt’ may be inherited … “We certainly know that human experiences affect how our genes are expressed,” says Rachel Yehuda, a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, who has performed epigenetic studies on Holocaust survivors. “But we don’t know for sure how this process works and how strong a contributor epigenetics really is compared to other things like genes.” Life experience capable of shaping perceptions and reactions even without touching DNA. In studies published over the past decade, Yehuda has found that children of Holocaust survivors have altered stress response systems and differences in methylation on the gene that regulates the number of Read More ›

From Phys.org: Scientists from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have developed a new technique to more precisely analyze bacterial populations, to reveal epigenetic mechanisms that can drive virulence. The new methods hold the promise of a potent new tool to offset the growing challenge of antibiotic resistance by bacterial pathogens. The research was published today in the journal Nature Communications, and conducted in collaboration with New York University Langone Medical Center and Brigham and Women’s Hospital of Harvard Medical School. The information content of the genetic code in DNA is not limited to the primary nucleotide sequence of A’s, G’s, C’s and T’s. Individual DNA bases can be chemically modified, with significant functional consequences. In the bacterial Read More ›

David Penny of Massey University, New Zealand, says while discussing a paper, no. Abstract: It is not really helpful to consider modern environmental epigenetics as neo-Lamarckian; and there is no evidence that Lamarck considered the idea original to himself. We must all keep learning about inheritance, but attributing modern ideas to early researchers is not helpful, and can be misleading. Open access He also notes, Thus, I should welcome this paper (Skinner 2015) – but still think that the paper is problematic -perhaps I see it as not addressing quite the right issues, or not the right questions? There has been a recent controversy in Nature over whether evolutionary biology needs to be rethought (Laland et al. 2014 argue for Read More ›

Says there is no boundary between genetics and epigenetics Interviewed by Suzan Mazur: Suzan Mazur: Over the last few decades there have been several movements regarding deficiencies of the Modern Synthesis. “The Osaka Group” was one of them, “theThe Altenberg 16” another, and now “The Third Way of Evolution” — otherwise known as “the Oxford 50.” You were part of Osaka and now Oxford. Why not Altenberg? Were you invited to the 2008 Extended Evolutionary Synthesis symposium? Mae-Wan Ho: No, I wasn’t. I’m not surprised I wasn’t invited because I changed fields quite drastically beginning in 1988. By 1993, I published my book, The Rainbow and the Worm: The Physics of Organisms. In the book I made good my criticism Read More ›