Gene and Great Grandchildren Essay

Submitted By surgeongeneral
Words: 403
Pages: 2

I have never heard of Epigenetic until today. I found today’s forum very interesting and enlightening. Epigenetic literally means above the genome. Genomes are like a computer, Epigenome is like the software, it tells the cells when to work, how to work, and how much to work. It also tells our cells what type of cells to be. For example, skin, hair, heart and liver cells. Epigenetic is still a fairly recent development in the study of our genetics. Before we used to think that certain information wasn’t passed down through generations. But, after studying the epigenome, it became apparent that it is possible for information to be passed down from parents to up to two generations of family. One of the studies that we observed in today’s forum was the study of how the epigenome affected rats and their children. There were rats with identical sets of genes, except for one had Methyl Groups that would turn off a certain gene and the other rats’ gene would not get turned off. This led to one rat being obese with a yellow coat and the other mouse was skinny with a brown coat. The subsequent offspring of these mice tended to also share the coats and weights of their mothers. Another study was smoking and second hand smoke. The study was pregnant mothers expecting children, especially girls, were at a very high risk of being effected by their parents actions, and not only the children, but their grandchildren. But the effect cannot really be proven until the great grandchildren. This is because the great grandchildren