Who Turned My Genes Off !

Who Turned My Genes Off!? Genes, those tiny building blocks of life, are inherently fascinating. How do a bunch of cells turn into a human being? How do the cells know what they are destined to be? A red blood cell, a skin cell, or a brain cell? The field of epigenetics may be able to answer those questions. According to the textbook, Pinel (2014) defines epigenetics as “the study of all mechanisms of inheritance other than the genetic code and its expression” (p.41). In other words, gene expression is influenced by many other factors that determine if the gene can express itself (Pinel, 2014). How does this mechanism work? To begin with, Pinel reminds us that important advancements in the field of epigenetics occurred with the completion of the Human Genome Project as well as research conducted on plants

Areas of non-structural DNA, previously known as junk DNA, are now known to be active and able to control gene expression and this is also true of small RNA molecules which act upon messenger RNA by RNA editing (Pinel, 2014). Other mechanisms that regulate gene expression include the widely studied methods of DNA methylation (decreases adjacent gene expression) and histone remodeling (increases or decreases expression) (Pinel, 2014). The final product of genetic expression or regulation can be seen in the example of a caterpillar culminating into a butterfly (Nisic, 2009). They both have the exact DNA, however, the regulation of expression of certain genes during maturation produces the final state of butterfly. As epigenetics continues to examine the process of genetic inheritance and expression, I believe it will transform how we