Those Sneaky Epigenes!

I was watching the latest edition of “Nova” I recorded and it was fascinating! It was called “The Ghost in Your Genes,” and it was all about “epigenes” and their newly acknowledged and remarkable effect on how our DNA expresses itself. The title was a play on the phrase “The ghost in the machine,” referring to something mysterious and ghostly about man which nevertheless, the philosopher says, has a naturalistic explanation.

What was so remarkable to me as I watched the program was how they never discussed the discovery of this “epigenome,” nor the true extent to which it makes our traditional understanding of DNA passe.

Here are a couple of definitions from the website.

Epigenome: Above or outside the genome. In a sense, the epigenome is like clothing around the DNA. For example, chemical groups alter the expression of the DNA by binding to the DNA as well as to the histones around the DNA.

Epigenetics: The study of changes in gene expression that do not involve changes in the genetic code (i.e., the DNA sequence) because they lie outside of the genome (i.e., the DNA). In a sense, epigenetics is the study of the genome’s “clothing”.

“. . .changes [that]. . .lie outside the genome“?

But weren’t we all taught just a few years ago that DNA was it? That DNA was the last book written on the facts of all life? And that once we had sequenced DNA it would only be a matter of time before we would understand and could determine everything about ourselves and our progeny?

And wasn’t it that inevitable future that the dystopian film “Gattaca” (which was, in my opinion, the greatest science fiction movie of all time), was all about?

Remember its tagline? “There is no gene for the human spirit.” Fantastic! I LOVE that sentiment!

And it turns out. . .it’s true!

So what’s happened?

Well, first scientists were shocked when they began to discover the number of genes was a hell of a lot less than they thought life required. Barely 30,000 when they were postulating hundreds of thousands. And not nearly enough to explain the fantastic complexity of human biology and consciousness.

And remember how at the beginning of this research, all the left-handed comments tossed around that conveyed the idea that man really wasn’t so great or unique after all? And certainly not as wonderful as we’d been taught by Christianity.

Why?

Well because, don’t you know man shares 98% of his genetic code with monkeys.

So how-now to explain his undeniable differences with those same monkeys?

Enter, apparently, the epigenome.

What is it, precisely? Well read the definition above. It makes it as clear as mud.

Where is it located? No one says.

And what is it telling us?

Reality ain’t as simple as we thought.

It now seems epigenes are the actual controllers over the controllers (DNA) we thought were the only controllers over all life on earth.

So where do these “epigenes” get their instructions from?

No one on Nova even considered the question, that I can recall.

These epigenes, it appears, turn the actual genes on and off, thus controlling their expression.

How and why do they do this? Where do they get their instructions from?

Life experiences, it seems!

Really! That’s what the program said.

Some factors mentioned on the program affecting the epigenes effect on DNA were diet and nutrition, stress, and even nurture or not from your mother(!)

And not just your mother, but your grandmother and grandfather as well!

How much further can science depart from a mechanistic, reductionist model of life before they admit they are blindly going where no man has gone before?

Now, with the introduction of this new “meta-genome,” the existence of unimaginable layers of complexity must now be accepted and considered. It seems we “simple humans” have a long way to go before we can understand the full genius of the One who designed us.

At least, that’s what I was thinking about it just this minute.

God’s Best to You.

Tom K.