Skinner – DNA and epigenetics

The DNA is made up of billions of little base pairs that come along and they come together to make up the DNA. There are genes spread throughout the genome and each gene sort of have slightly different function in terms of the protein being produced and so forth in terms of what it does. And so essentially you have all these genes that come together that allow certain cell types to be a certain cell type, like a liver cell will be a liver cell and a neuron will be in your brain and be a neuron because of the certain sets of genes that are turned on at that time. And so that’s sort of the way everything comes together going forward.  

So epigenetics is defined as sort of molecular factors around the DNA that can regulate how the DNA functions. And usually that means which genes are on and off or at certain times of development how they get turned on and so forth. But basically it’s the molecular factors around the DNA that can regulate how the DNA functions completely independent of DNA sequence. It does not care what the DNA sequence is. If there was a sequence dependent then it would be genetics. The fact that it’s epigenetics means it doesn’t matter what the sequence is. So it’s really two different things. And then basically when the epigenetics changes it sort of regulates the stability of the DNA; how often it might get mutations, how it functions and long-term sort of how the genome, sort of all the DNA works. So it’s molecular factors around the DNA that regulate how the DNA functions completely independent of DNA sequence.    

Now we realize that the epigenetics can chemically modify things around the DNA, can totally silence a gene or turn on a gene, put it halfway in-between, and you’ll have these different sets of genes not due to the sequence of the DNA but due to the epigenetics around that sequence as to whether it gets turned on and off. And so essentially it is what’s one of the major factors that regulate the DNA. And so just the sequence, just genetics, just the sequence we thought was going to be enough to do all that but now we know in today’s sort of science that it’s not. It’s just a small piece of a much bigger story and with epigenetics and genetics together it works much better-more efficiently.