#394 High Gene

There was this old scientist named Lamarck who had some theories about genetics. He believed in the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Giraffes, he maintained, had longer necks because successive generations had stretched to reach the tallest leaves. Like me doing pushups every morning would somehow convey to my unborn son the proclivity to do pushups every morning. Come to think of it, my dad did pushups every morning. Hmm. In any event, along came Darwin’s natural selection and Lamarck’s theories were relegated to the scientific backwaters like Cosmopolis to Aberdeen. All the good wood went to the big Darwin harbor. But, what goes around comes around, or as scientists say, orbits happen. Because today a new science is emerging that may actually lend some legitimacy to Lamarck’s claims. It’s called epigenetics and it promises to be all the things genetics was not. Think for a minute. They talk about unraveling the human genome and the possibility for gene therapy but really, what are they gonna do? A lot of genetic diseases don’t show up till late in life. What’s the plan, take a gene out of your DNA when you’re forty years old? Not gonna happen. So if you’re stuck with the Alzheimer’s gene, tough luck, you might as well just forget about any therapy along with everything else. But epigenetics is a different matter. Turns out the kajillion genes we have aren’t all operating all the time. Some turn on at some times, some others. When a gene is turned on, or expressed as they say, it functions as its code dictates. But if it’s turned off it just sits dormant. Like a dandelion waiting to burst out the second you’ve cut your lawn. Gene expression is the real key to the genetic code. That’s why we don’t have anuses on our nipples or liver cells in our mouths. Uh. Liver. One method that makes gene expression happen is methylation. It’s your body’s way of turning genes on and off using methyl groups that lock up certain molecules so other molecules can’t get in and tell a gene it just needs to express itself if it wants to be true and free. Scientists took genetically fat white mice and through methyl group manipulation alone bred the next generation to be skinny and brown. No genes were removed or altered. Only methyl groups. And it lasted for four Lamarckian generations. But the great thing is, methyl groups mean that actually point-of-sale gene therapy is possible. If you know the map, you can actually go in and tell Gene X-243 to shut the heck up and voila, no more Parkinson’s. Of course, a good map is the thing. Medical science thought estrogen therapy was the key to menopausal osteoporosis too. It’s a natural selection, they said. Till that whole heart failure thing started dropping middle age women like flies. Now they say the key to preserving bone density is resistance training and, guess what, stretching. Lamarck, get set, go.
America, ya gotta love it.