The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology is Rewriting Our Understanding of Genetics, Disease and Inheritance

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The pattern of modifications is referred to as a histone code and is extraordinarily difficult to read.

But then came the really surprising:babies who were born small tended to stay small all their lives - even though they were properly nourished - with lower obesity rates than the general population.Epigenetics falls broadly within the area of systems biology premised on the concept that system-level phenomena are essential as explanatory factors in biology. Once made, epigenetic changes can be very long lasting, which is how our long-term memory is possible. Genes don't just issue instructions: they respond to messages coming from other genes, from hormones and from nutritional cues and learning.

This is a much more sensible metaphor, but then on the same page she refers to "the DNA blueprint" as if she hadn't read what she had just written. Carey explains that this only occurs in susceptible regions of the genome and that epigenetic reprogramming during early embryogenesis circumvents the passage of many undesirable or dangerous modifications.But this book, subtitled: "How modern biology is rewriting our understanding of genetics, disease and inheritance", is an attempt to put matters straight. It seeks to rationalize and limit the meaning of the term epigenetics and its application so as to maintain and enhance its explanatory power and utility. McEachern and Lloyd [bh2]make the case that molecular epigenetic processes are amazingly conserved across metazoan phyla.