Epigenetics is a new field emerging on the horizon where something new in genetics is being brought into focus. It seeks to understand if there are probabilities, and yes, even possibilities, of human genes being changed over periods of time by the influences of the environment. Long has it been known that genes are the causative factor of certain human types and characteristics, but the question now being asked, can this be turned around? Is this being turned around?
To clarify the above , this: Genes are proteins that dictate how people act, think, and look. Studies on rats have shown that there are possibilities that certain environmental elements, a mother’s love for instance, a wholesome life style, a life of criminal behavior, a lifetime in prison, and other such influences may somehow reverse how the proteins are to react on the new life being formed.
This addresses what some educators already believe, that a baby is learning from the outside influences before it is even born. Can the genes, while in their formative stage as an example, be changed by an mother singing to her baby, reading to the future child that is being formed in her body? Or is this merely speculative and have no finite conclusions to back it up? Well both, but that does not stop the now emerging epigenetics from taking a look into future possibilities.
Recent attention has been given to the above possibilities by an article from the New York Times “Genes as Mirrors of Life Experiences, by Benedict Carey. What prompted more research into epigenetics is the amount of unknowns about how mental illnesses can be thwarted, as an example. For instance, even though much charting and cross matching of DNA sequences told, and are still telling, a great deal about illness in general, it show little positives in these areas. Many genes have been mapped that show ‘maybe’ involvement in bipolar and schizophrenia, but nothing conclusive.
What the sequencing of DNA did do was make way for questions such as are now being asked? How does the environment affect the future life of genes, if it does? It makes sense to believe that every positive influence does make a difference in future generations. Genes are not concrete blocks but are living matter that impact the lives of people, and emotions such as love and kindness and acceptability as opposed to ostracism, cruelty, and hatred certainly make differences. In all forms of life, before and after.
In a way genes are a blue print for how an organism is to act. But in its formative state, is there reason to believe changes can take place? Why not if influences are powerful enough to override the deleterious effects of abnormal genes yet in their formative stage. Life itself has change built in. Many a man or woman bent on a life of crime or a life not worth living, has been turned around by kindness, or by disruptions of their life styles from one of bad influences into a life of better influences. Cases such as these have been documented. Aren’t genes always in an evolving form? From better to worse, or worse to better?
The life of St. Paul, is an example. He was stopped in his tracks when he was confronted by Jesus who asked him why he was crucifying Christians? He had the wind knocked out of him, was blinded, but when he came to, his life style changed from a Roman Soldier who was out hunting Christians to capture and torture, to one who picked up Jesus’s cross and carried it for the rest of his life. We don’t know how this affected his genes, or even if it did, but he was changed completely. Believers know that God, the creator of us all can do anything, certainly he can change the structure of genes.
It is a matter of getting our tales straight, and keeping our eyes open, and our feet pointed toward a better tomorrow. A word of warning here, although this article started out defining epigenetics, and the citing of the article, Genes as Mirrors of Life Experiences, the comments given here do not mirror those in that article. It was only the catalyst that caused them to rush forth. At best, these comments are speculative and are the opinions of the author who is not at all knowledgeable about the subject matter, only intensively interested in mental health and how it being played out on the Internet and in society in general.
