I swear I'm stating to experience increasing levels of the Mandela effect (might not be the proper explanation) over the last few years, because this is the first time I've ever heard of genes being a thing which could change. Granted, I'm not a biologist, but we have sayings like "good genes" or "it's in the genes", and I've heard countless medical explanations that things are passed down "in the genes". Aren't genes directly linked to one's dna, and not a thing that any physical trauma or stress can physically modify? Why does this seem like it directly clashes with my life long understanding of "genes"? I'm possibly going insane, because odd things like this keep popping up and are a bit troubling in some odd dejavu kind of way
As you may have noticed, say from technologyland,
some words are hopelessly overloaded.
"Gene" is such a word in biology.
In its purest essence, a gene is "An inheritable trait."
This is from when they were an idea, not a particular thing (yet).
I won't go through biology's "central dogma" but encourage all to do so [1].
This will start to shed light on some of the basic different molecules that are at various times refered to as genes.
But this easily understandable frmework is only the start as there will be exceptions to everything, and nuances everywhere.
If you need a set of decoder rings to read a message are the rings part of the message? Is the message really a message without the rings.
and so on off into opinionland. (like I just did)
My question still remains. Even if the gene isn't altered, but the expression is, which I assume is the important part in determining outward influence the gene has, I wasn't aware anything short of radiation could alter that. If stress can change you at the gene level, or metal state in general, wouldn't we all be able to "fix ourselves" or otherwise change our gene expressions by submitting ourselves to various metal states to invoke the wanted gene response?
TL;DR, I wasn't aware anything regarding genes could change, that's all, and I'm more curious why I keep discovering so many large gaps in things I personally considered life long, common knowledge. My question was almost rhetorical for myself.
Disconcerting, like returning to someone's comment, and it's subtly different from how you remembered (before you knew of the recent editing feature).
Most (all?) scientific ideas are simplifications. e.g. that species are separate. That the relationships between species can be represented by a tree.
Yes, it used to be taught that genes don't change. But there's methylation and telomeres and "gene therapy" is a thing. I agree that changing gene expression sounds like sophistry, since the point of genes is their effect. Sounds like Lamarckism to me.
Everything you've been taught is wrong - in that however thoroughly something is known, there's always more to it.
Yes, your body does something called methylation to alter gene expression, and yes, medicine is trying to use this fact for diagnostics at the moment.
If you experience stress, your body will upregulate expression of cortisol and other hormones. If you remove the stressor, it will downregulate. Chronic stress can break these processes and require medical intervention. This is all (in theory) detectable with methylation analysis of the genome, but it will take a decade to fully flesh the technology out.
It is relatively new discovery. We now understand that DNA strands are usually tightly wrapped around histones. This resembles strings wrapped around beads.
Gene expression is talking about the myriad number of things that causes the DNA strands to relax and unwound from the histone. By exposing that piece of DNA strand the gene can be expressed and the resulting protein is formed. I don’t believe we have a complete understanding yet of what causes genes to be expressed or not expressed. There seem to be multiple factors at play.
My understanding of telomeres is that is primarily a mechanism to prevent cancer. After a cell replicates itself a number of times the telomeres grow shorter and shorter and at a certain point it stops replicating because the assumption is the DNA has now been damaged by environmental factors. Some cells don’t have this mechanism and can replicate infinitely eg skin cells.
Epigenetics is the catch-all term. “Evolution in Four Dimensions” is an interesting if slightly dated book going into many of the ways that the expression of your genetic material can chance who you are.
I think this might be a fun opportunity to accept that things are complicated and to be excited to learn new things. But I always personally knew that gene expressions can change with circumstance: that’s why arctic foxes have winter and summer coats, and why point coated cats have dark fur on the extremities of the body.
The headline is wrong, as the article clearly shows, and instead of reading the article to check, your first instinct is the Mandela effect and doubting your sense of reality?...
I don't say this often but you should probably go to a therapist
Obviously I didn't say that because of this article alone, which is why I said "increasing levels of". I, like many people here, am an engineer, and like to consider myself a pragmatic and logical person, and have not jumped to such an explanation immediately. It was also half said in jest, because I'm logical enough to know the real answer is my lack of knowledge on the subject, and a bit of superstition surrounding coincidences in my personal life that literally just this weekend a friend randomly started talking about being able to "will past trauma and fix your genes", to which I said they were nuts, then this article hits the front page.
Thanks for your recommendation, if it was said in good faith and not as a put down, but I'm well grounded in our shared interpretation of this thing we call reality.
Also, I'm all for therapy and have been many times, but CBT won't fix a schizophrenic who has detached from reality, which is what you're trying to convey with the selective bits of my original message used, so your "go see a therapist" suggestion isn't helpful, even if your intent was, and based on the tone of your message I'm assuming that your intent was not to be helpful anyway.
Genes are the blueprint but they can be damaged and replicate wrong. That is how stress or poverty "changes" them.. (feel free to correct me). Cancer is also wrong copying dna etc.
Is this epigenetics? Don't want to assume anything, but maybe this wasn't well known when you were in school. I vaguely remember reading about this a decade ago.
