Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Epigenetics: The Evolution Revolution

nybooks.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 37 posts

Re: Epigenetics: The Evolution Revolution

#2

Post by mxwsn »

The impact of epigenetics can be powerful.

A neat example is sex, one of the most obvious and striking axes of biological variation. Unlike humans where the presence or absence of an entire chromosome (X or Y) determines sex, there are turtles and reptiles that determine their sex based on ambient temperature alone.

The logical consequence is that a pair of female and male turtle twins can share exactly the same genome yet be different sexes — their sex is determined solely by how their genome is read (epigenetics).

Re: Epigenetics: The Evolution Revolution

#3

Post by learned »

mxwsn wrote: post #2

The impact of epigenetics can be powerful. A neat example is sex, one of the most obvious and striking axes of biological variation. Unlike humans where the presence or absence of an entire chromosome (X or Y) determines sex, there are turtles and reptiles that determine their sex based on ambient temperature alone. The logical consequence is that a pair of female and male turtle twins can share exactly the same geno…

There is also some really interesting epigenetics research focusing on age-related disease.

For example, Steve Horvath's group at UCLA has been refining an "epigenetic clock" using DNA methylation data to predict all-cause mortality in several species with a relatively simple test. It has the potential to be an incredibly valuable metric in the field going forward.

Re: Epigenetics: The Evolution Revolution

#4

Post by daemonk »

There should be a better distinction made between EPIgenetics and epiGENETICS. The former is more about regulatory mechanisms (methylation, histone modifications, polycomb-like mechanisms, etc) on top of our DNA. The latter is more about non-DNA inheritance of information across generation, which is not completely clear yet.

I think people tend to conflate these two ideas.

Re: Epigenetics: The Evolution Revolution

#5

Post by asdff »

daemonk wrote: post #4

There should be a better distinction made between EPIgenetics and epiGENETICS. The former is more about regulatory mechanisms (methylation, histone modifications, polycomb-like mechanisms, etc) on top of our DNA. The latter is more about non-DNA inheritance of information across generation, which is not completely clear yet. I think people tend to conflate these two ideas.

I think most people don't even know that much, this isn't something that is deeply covered in most intro to bio courses in college; you have to learn a bit about how DNA is packaged and transcribed which you'd get in upper division courses. At least in the field, there is no confusion. Non-DNA inheritance is inheritance of these epigenetic regulatory states in which you've described, but the term used specifically for this is transgenerational inheritance.

Re: Epigenetics: The Evolution Revolution

#7

Post by whataretensors »

Slippery slope here. Most people don't understand or accept evolution, even engineers. For example, anyone who accepts equitable distribution of attributes across genetic variances(a commonly accepted social narrative).

Evolution is messy. Epigenetics makes it even messier. We have to be careful not to conflate the value of someone by anything genetic. Especially not epigenetics, which seems from this article to be related to childhood trauma.

I'm interested in how we can use AI to modify genetic code to improve and fix our past epigenetic and genetic shortcomings.

Re: Epigenetics: The Evolution Revolution

#8

Post by killjoywashere »

whataretensors wrote: post #7

Slippery slope here. Most people don't understand or accept evolution, even engineers. For example, anyone who accepts equitable distribution of attributes across genetic variances(a commonly accepted social narrative). Evolution is messy. Epigenetics makes it even messier. We have to be careful not to conflate the value of someone by anything genetic. Especially not epigenetics, which seems from this article to be r…

I gather you watched Google's Selfish Ledger video?

Re: Epigenetics: The Evolution Revolution

#10

Post by mrkurt »

whataretensors wrote: post #7

Slippery slope here. Most people don't understand or accept evolution, even engineers. For example, anyone who accepts equitable distribution of attributes across genetic variances(a commonly accepted social narrative). Evolution is messy. Epigenetics makes it even messier. We have to be careful not to conflate the value of someone by anything genetic. Especially not epigenetics, which seems from this article to be r…

> For example, anyone who accepts equitable distribution of attributes across genetic variances(a commonly accepted social narrative).

Can you give an example?

Post reply on HN