I am studying the effect of trauma on the ability to learn, and I can’t get my head around this concept. I get genetics. I get experience-determined elements, but I do not get epigenetics.
In: Biology
In many ways, you’re closer to right than you think.
Genetics is your DNA, which I like to describe as a football playbook, here’s how you can do a lot of things, and heres what you should do in response to certain things,. Always.
Epigenetics is the handwritten notes on the margins, and the tabs you use to get to a specific section. When you hand off your ‘genetic playbook’ to your kids, some of the notes go with it, and some of the notes get lost. We don’t understand epigenetics yet, and there’s a lot about genetic regulation we haven’t the foggiest idea about.
Histones, the scrolls that help organize your DNA can be modified to make the section of DNA they contain more accessible, or less accessible. This is handy for turning off/on age related genes, or genes that promote energy use when you’re starving. If it helped you, odds are it might help your kids, so it gets inherited, or gets recreated in them through similar experiences. It’s complicated, and it’s still poorly understood.
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