I hear more and more about the field of epigenetics and how it may be extremely impactful to the future of medical technologies.
Can someone explain it to me in simple terms? Thank you!
In: Biology
Your genes contain instructions for how to build the pieces of your body, from the overall structure down to the individual proteins of each cell.
Some of those instructions can be turned on or off by attaching the molecular equivalent of post-it notes (in actual chemistry terms, they’re often methyl groups [-CH3]) to them. For example, if you’re male, the genes that control the development of female reproductive organs got turned off very early in your development.
They’re medically relevant because some diseases seem to be caused by a gene being turned on or off incorrectly. If we knew how to get the body to swap them when we wanted it to, we could cure, or at least treat, those diseases.
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