Beware the pseudo gene genies | Science | The Guardian

My introduction to the "field" of epigenetics came three years ago when I viewed Bruce Lipton's "The New Biology - Where Mind and Matter Meet".  A video presentation based off his book of the same name.

"The Biology of Belief is a groundbreaking work in the field of New Biology. Author Dr. Bruce Lipton is a former medical school professor and research scientist. His experiments, and that of other leading edge scientists, have examined in great detail the processes by which cells receive information. The implications of this research radically change our understanding of life. It shows that genes and DNA do not control our biology; that instead DNA is controlled by signals from outside the cell, including the energetic messages emanating from our positive and negative thoughts. Dr. Lipton's profoundly hopeful synthesis of the latest and best research in cell biology and quantum physics is being hailed as a major breakthrough showing that our bodies can be changed as we retrain our thinking."

Filled with the standard woo, I was able to pull some of his basic points from the presentation:

• Genetic Determinism is not true, it is an outdated assumption.
• LIFE = PROTEIN MOVEMENT
• Genes do not cause anything. They are simply the blueprints. Genes are just a potential. It is not under the control of the genes as to whether or not they get selected. We are controlled by perception not by genes.
• WE ARE CONTROLLED BY OUR BELIEFS!
• It is our beliefs that adjust our physiology.
• It is our beliefs that adjust the selection of genes.
• Genes and DNA do not control our biology; that instead DNA is controlled by signals from outside the cell, including the energetic messages emanating from our positive and negative thoughts.
• Lipton explains in layman’s terms scientific principles how the body’s cells react either positively or negatively to the mind’s perception of the environment.

So, over the course of the next few years I have watched to see what may or may not transpire.  In other words, is this a legitimate field of science being hijacked, like that of quantum physics (ie Deepak Chopra)?  Over the course of the next few years I have attempted to come to a layman's understanding of the "real" science and its implications but alas I still have to rely on the smart people to explain it.

As David Gorski notes, "epigenetics is the study of heritable traits that do not depend upon the primary sequence of DNA."  Citing PZ Myers, "this definition is unsatisfactory in that it is rather vague, which is perhaps why quacks have such an easy time abusing concepts in epigenetics,,,.  The term 'epigenetics' basically 'includes everything. Gene regulation, physiological adaptation, disease responses…they all fall into the catch-all of epigenetics.'"  Continuing,   "epigenetic modifications can be viewed as mechanisms that can ensure accurate transmission of chromatin states and gene expression profiles over generations. We now recognize many epigenetic processes and mechanisms that can regulate the expression of genes, and their number seems to grow every year. It’s become a hideously complex field."

Another way to look at it, maybe a bit simpler, epigentics refers to external modifications to DNA that turn genes "on" or "off." These modifications do not change the DNA sequence, but instead, they affect how cells "read" genes.  Epigenetics are tweaks to the expression of genes in response to environmental factors.

Epigentics is a "real" field of study within genetics.  And, yes, it has been glommed onto by woo-meisters. So, with the current article landing in my lap, it rekindled my interest in whether epigenetics was a real science or not and how exactly is it being hijacked.  Along with that, how to combat it as it is used on many levels of woo.

There seems to be two hijack points noted by not only Rutherford, but David Gorski and Steven Novella.  Point one being, as Gorski puts it, a "fatal flaw" in Darwin's theory.  The resurgence of Lamarckian evolution (or neo-Lemarckian evolution); in other words, epigenetics is to be the “death knell of Darwin”:

If the changes are permanent, then we’ve got big news. But given that in mice they have at best only lasted a few generations, the effects are intriguing but not revolutionary. Creationists cite epigenetics to assert that Darwin was wrong, and that epigenetics may show Lamarckian evolution – that is, acquired during life. It doesn’t, as the changes do not alter the DNA sequence on which natural selection acts. Even if one day we did show that epigenetic tags were permanently heritable, it would still only be a drop in the evolutionary ocean. Show me one robust example, and I’ll show you a billion that are straight-up Darwinian.

The second point where the field of epigenetics is hijacked is none other than woo-woo medicine.  Better known as alt-med or the gussied up term of Complementary and Alternative Medicine; now prettied up even more as Integrative Medicine.  As Gorski notes, "the same sorts of arguments [used to argue against Darwin] are being made for epigenetic modifications as a “mechanism” through which various CAM modalities “work”,,,.   To boil it down, CAM advocates look to epigenetics as basically magic, a way that you—yes, you!—can reprogram your very own DNA (and all without Toby Alexander and the need to mess with all those messy etheric strands of DNA) and thereby heal yourself of almost anything or even render yourself basically immune to nearly every disease that plagues modern humans."

Keep in mind, that by definition, CAM "treatments are those that are not part of the science-based healthcare system, and are not clearly backed by scientific evidence." And why as Gorski explains. "that the quacks take [epigenetics] beyond hype into magical thinking."

New age gurus such as Deepak Chopra cite epigenetics as a way of changing your life, under the false supposition that genes are destiny, and epigenetic changes brought on by lifestyle choices such as meditation “allows us almost unlimited influence on our fate”. Well, no: that sandwich you just ate has changed the expression of your genes too. Even the few inherited epigenetic changes we observe are not very predictable, let alone predictably positive. The Överkalix grandsons lived longer if their grandfathers lived through famine. But the granddaughters of women who had survived fallow seasons had lower life expectancy. Conclusion? Much more work needed.

Just as Gorski and many others have concluded, Rutherford ends on this point,

Epigenetics is fascinating but still in its infancy. It’s not heretical, it won’t upend Darwin, or give you supernatural powers, but it is a necessary pursuit in our never-ending quest to unpick the inscrutableness of being. More, unhyped, work is needed, and mystical thinking is never welcome round these here parts.

Just like any science, it is fascinating but, it is no "some sort of magical panacea that will overcome our genetic predispositions"

Beware the pseudo gene genies | Science | The Guardian

Voting genes: Are political views inherited? | Genetic Literacy Project

W.S. Gilbert wrote those lines back in 1882, based on a simple observation that signs of a person’s future political orientation and ideology often are evident during their childhood, and today we have scientific evidence that it’s true, at least in a certain sense. A decade ago, in the psychology journal Research and Personality, researchers from UC Berkley demonstrated clear associations between liberal vs. conservative political views in young adults and various personality traits recorded when the individuals were in nursery school. That finding raises the question of whether the roots of political beliefs can be traced back even even earlier than nursery school; namely, do such beliefs have any inherited component? Can your voting behavior and political views be predicted based on your genes?
,,,
Before you conclude from this that there must exist genes for leftwing and rightwing beliefs, a couple of caveats must be laid out. First of all, the study cited above was not published in a peer reviewed journal, but merely in Britain’s The Sunday Times. Second, there most certainly are possible non-genetic ways for parents to transfer their opinions to children. Hearing something over and over again through childhood is likely to affect your point of view, as are your experiences growing up and interactions with people inside and outside your family. The Sunday Times study actually acknowledges this, simply by not claiming that genetics accounts for 100 percent. The real question, therefore, is this: is there any scientific evidence supporting the idea that genes, or other aspects of biology, at least factor a person’s political views, or voting behavior. Looking at things from this perspective, it turns out that some relevant scientific investigations actually have been carried out.

Voting genes: Are political views inherited? | Genetic Literacy Project

To do the crazy news or the other crazy news first,,,

It was voted on and the "other" crazy news won by a tally of 1-0.  So on to some bizarre headlines and the stories that go with them.

Former Gay Activist Says Homosexuality Is Addictive ‘As A Drug'

I am counting down the days till she comes out of the closet (again).  The money is too good for that to happen at the moment.

Linda Wall used to be gay, an activist for LGBT rights, even. And, as do most converts, she is attacking her former way of life. She says she was “seduced” and was instantly addicted to “teh gay.” Because “teh gay” is “like a drug.”

Appearing on Mission America, hosted by Linda Harvey, Wall spoke about her new group called Virginia Mass Resistance. Anti-gay? Check. Fundamentalist? Check. Promoting lies about teh gay? Oh, yeah.

According to Wall, she was in college when teh gay took her in. It seems that a temptress went to work on this poor rural Virginian and, before she knew it, she was gay! A little wine, a little pot and voila!… a lesbian! She admits that she had been intrigued by lesbianism and decided to explore it. But, horror of horrors, she was addicted to it that very night:

Penn. coroner auctioning firearms from suicides: People pay more for ‘guns that took a life’

This is why some of us call PA,  Pennsyltucky.  I have lived here 16 years, and this is the first time I have ever heard of such a thing, though doesn't mean much,,,

A Pennsylvania coroner said this week that the state’s law required him to auction off guns that were used in suicides and other accidental violent deaths, even though his county has not held a similar auction in 30 years.

Westmoreland County Coroner Ken Bacha told WTAE that his office planned to sell 97 guns during the Nov. 8 auction. He said that families of the deceased are given one year to claim the weapons, and then Pennsylvania law required them to be sold.

And Bacha said that the violent history of the guns could actually inflate their value.

“Most of these firearms that are going to be auctioned were non-homicide firearms,” he explained. “In other words, accidental deaths, but most of them were suicides.”

I'll just leave this here and let y'all decide,,,

Blood-Chilling U.N. Document Exposed: Report Surfaces Today Claiming if Something Isn’t done Now about Climate Change Things Will be Irreversible Tomorrow and Their Real Agenda is Worse Then You Thought…

The truth is our government has an agenda and often times they try to trick us into agreeing with whatever their own purposes happen to be. Be it that they want to drive us into World War III or some other devious agenda; they have a goal.

That being said we must pay attention to one of the biggest lies they are pushing today and that is the lie of Global Warming/Global Cooling/Climate Change (that should scream fraud all on its own but sadly many still believe it). In the 2014 IPCC Climate Change Synthesis Report— released Sunday— I discovered some staggering information that could be life-changing in our near future. Especially considering the warning the United Nations posted today that “if something isn’t done soon about Global Warming, then it will be Irreversible.”

Mystery Of Human Skulls At Stamford Transfer Station Solved

The two human skulls found Thursday at the Stamford refuse transfer station came from the Fairfield County home of a man who apparently was into the occult and who died recently, according to one of the men who cleaned out the man's house.

Two human skulls and thousands of magazines, books and videos on Satan, witchcraft and the occult were discovered Thursday afternoon at the city's refuse transfer station.

The skulls — tossed out by the cleaning crew who thought they weren't real — prompted a call to police, who swarmed the transfer station to investigate.

Neanderthal-human sex bred light skins and infertility - life - 29 January 2014 - New Scientist

Over the course of the past week, numerous articles have been appearing concerning Neanderthal DNA and its presences in our modern genome. There are actually three studies that were done by 3 independent teams. Pretty kewl stuff if you like science,,,

IT IS surprising what a little hanky-panky can do. A handful of sexual encounters between humans and Neanderthals made many of us what we are today, affecting both our appearance and our vulnerability to disease. But the genetic legacy left by the Neanderthals also highlights just how different we are from our sister species.

Neanderthals lived in Europe and Asia between about 200,000 and 30,000 years ago. Our species – sometimes dubbed "modern humans" – made it to Eurasia about 65,000 years ago, and so the two species had plenty of time to cosy up. In 2010, geneticists discovered that they had been very close neighbours indeed. They sequenced a Neanderthal genome and discovered it carried genes that also appear in the genomes of people of European and Asian descent: our species must have interbred with Neanderthals.

Now, by studying Neanderthal genes in people alive today, researchers are beginning to appreciate how that interbreeding influenced our species.

In one new study of 1000 human genomes, Sriram Sankararaman and David Reich of Harvard Medical School and colleagues found that Neanderthal DNA is most common in regions of the genome with the greatest genetic variability, making them a prime target for natural selection. While Neanderthal DNA may make up only 1.6 to 1.8 per cent of the Eurasian genome, it punches above its weight in terms of biological impact, says Reich (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature12961).

Joshua Akey and Ben Vernot of the University of Washington in Seattle have analysed the Neanderthal DNA in a further 665 humans (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1245938). Both their study and the Harvard one found a hotspot of Neanderthal ancestry in genes relating to keratin, a fibrous protein found in our hair, skin and nails.

,,,A third study published this week describes a DNA analysis of one person who lived in Stone Age Europe about 7000 years ago – 40,000 years after any Neanderthal interbreeding. His genes suggest his skin was dark (Nature, doi.org/q74). It may be that the Neanderthal keratin affected early Eurasians' hair instead, perhaps straightening it.


Neanderthal-human sex bred light skins and infertility - life - 29 January 2014 - New Scientist

See also:
Surprise! Ancient European had dark skin and blue eyes, DNA reveals

Hello, Neanderthal! Yes, This Means You.

New studies reveal 20 Percent of Neanderthal genome lives on in modern humans

Fifth of Neanderthals' genetic code lives on in modern humans

Kissing cousins

Your Body Parts Are Ripe For Gene Hacking ⚙ Co.Labs ⚙ code + community

Came across this story Concerning the HeLa genome a few months back. Curious about who Henrietta Lacks was I did a bit more digging. Who would have thought that a bio-ethic quagmire would be an interesting story,,,

HeLa, short for Henrietta Lacks, is the reason bioethics is in the news today: the canonical example of the problem with non-consent. It’s the codename for the cancerous cell line taken, without permission, from an African-American tobacco farmer and mother of five in 1951. The stolen cells were unique: They copied themselves in petri dishes, which no human cancer cells ever had before. HeLa cells have since been involved in 74,000 studies, helping to develop cancer medicines and many other treatments. But Henrietta never gave her cells for research: They were taken from her, at a time before doctors had a concept of medical consent. Far from being anonymized, the abbreviation for her name became synonymous with research on cancer cells within the scientific community.

Rebecca Skloot, author of the best-selling book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks that chronicles this story, says that in the intervening years, little has changed.

“Right now, many if not most [patients whose tissue is used for research] aren't giving consent, because they aren't being told that their tissue is being used in research, because they're considered anonymous samples," says Skloot. "All this material is still daily being collected from people without their knowledge: Scientists are very clearly saying 'we can identify you from that [DNA]'... If you tell people, 'we want to collect these samples to use in research,' most people will say yes. The problem comes when they find out after the fact.”

Shockingly, the scientific community made that mistake again with the Lacks family, 60 years after the initial transgression. In March, the genome of the popular HeLa cell line was sequenced and published by a lab in Germany. This prompted an uproar from journalists, geneticists, and bioethicists who were outraged that the Lacks family had again not been asked for permission. The data was retracted within days, and no more was seen of the HeLa genome until Nature republished it last Wednesday, along with an agreement between the Lacks family and Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Your Body Parts Are Ripe For Gene Hacking ⚙ Co.Labs ⚙ code + community

See also:

'Henrietta Lacks': A Donor's Immortal Legacy

Short Science: New Era of HeLa Research

Henrietta's Tumor

Genetic Pathway Appears to Link Schizophrenia to Fragile X Syndrome | Psych Central News

May one question is how broad these findings can be applied or is it just this "one" population that it is relevant to: "The deactivation or disruption of this protein is responsible for Fragile X syndrome, a disorder associated with autism and learning difficulties, primarily in men."

Despite advances in genetic research, the development of schizophrenia remains a puzzle.

New research has discovered a common biological pathway between schizophrenia and Fragile X syndrome, a disorder associated with autism and learning difficulties.

This is one of the few times researchers have uncovered genetic evidence for the underlying causes of schizophrenia. Many associations between schizophrenia and genetic risk factors have been reported, but only a very few can be considered schizophrenia susceptibility genes.

[,,,]
The new study uncovers an important biological pathway that appears to underlie schizophrenia and could contribute to the cognitive impairment that is an important component of this disorder.

“This is a tremendous discovery for our team; not only have we uncovered vital information about the biology behind schizophrenia, but we have also linked this same biological process to a disorder associated with learning difficulties,” said molecular geneticist Dr. Aarno Palotie, lead author.

“Our findings offer great hope for future studies into the genetic basis of schizophrenia and other brain disorders, potentially finding new drug targets against them.”

[,,,]
“These two disorders, schizophrenia and Fragile X syndrome, although they may seem drastically different, share key features, particularly the cognitive impairment that is frequently associated with both conditions,” said co-author Dr, Nelson Freimer, director of the Center for Neurobehavioral Genetics and professor of psychiatry at UCLA. “So, it is not unexpected that they could share some of the same biological processes.

“What is fantastic about this study,” he said, ”is that through investigations in an isolated corner of Finland we are contributing to concerted international efforts that are beginning to unravel the genetic root of schizophrenia, a debilitating disorder that affects so many people throughout the world.”

Genetic Pathway Appears to Link Schizophrenia to Fragile X Syndrome | Psych Central News

Origin of intelligence and mental illness linked to ancient genetic accident

 Professor Seth Grant, of the University of Edinburgh, who led the research, said: "One of the greatest scientific problems is to explain how intelligence and complex behaviours arose during evolution."

The research, which is detailed in two papers in Nature Neuroscience, also shows a direct link between the evolution of behaviour and the origins of brain diseases.

Scientists believe that the same genes that improved our mental capacity are also responsible for a number of brain disorders.

"This ground breaking work has implications for how we understand the emergence of psychiatric disorders and will offer new avenues for the development of new treatments," said John Williams, Head of Neuroscience and Mental Health at the Wellcome Trust, one of the study funders.

Origin of intelligence and mental illness linked to ancient genetic accident