"You’re probably familiar with the phrase, “You are what you eat.”
But did you know that you are also what your mother and grandmother ate? The budding science of epigenetics shows that our physical makeup is about much more than inheriting our mother’s eyes or our father’s smile.
We are accustomed to thinking that the only thing we inherit from our parents is genes—packets of information in DNA that give instructions for proteins. These genes determine our physical traits such as hair and eye color, height, and even susceptibility to disease.
But we also inherit specific “modifications” of our DNA in the form of chemical tags. These influence how the genes express our physical traits. The chemical tags are referred to as “epigenetic” markers because they exist outside of (epi-) the actual sequence of DNA (-genetics).
Let me use an analogy to explain. The following sentence can have two very different meanings, depending on the punctuation used. “A woman, without her man, is nothing” or “A woman: Without her, man is nothing.”---
The words of both sentences are the same, but the meaning is
different because of the punctuation. The same is true for DNA and its chemical tags. The sequence of DNA can be identical but produce different results based on the presence or absence of epigenetic markers. For example, identical twins have the same DNA sequence but can have different chemical tags leading one to be susceptible to certain diseases but not the other.
Parents can pass down epigenetic markers for many generations, or
God knew that organisms would need the ability to adapt in a world that was no longer “very good.” (Genesis 1:31)
God likely designed organisms with epigenetic mechanisms to allow them to change easily and quickly in relation to their environment.
These types of changes are much more valuable than random mutation and natural selection because they can produce immediate benefits for offspring without harming the basic information in the actual sequence of DNA. "
AIG
