Epigentics – Wearing your designer Genes

Here is the link to the interview with my fantastic other guests Mae-Wan Ho (The Institute for Science in Society) and Charan Surdhar

Epigentics is the new science understanding of genetics and how the environment effects the expression of those genes. Epigentics literally means ‘Above the genes’. This understanding that environmental factors (including thoughts and emotions) can alter the biological factors previously thought to be fixed is fundamentally against the concept of one of the fathers of DNA discovery. Francis Crick created what become known as the central Dogma of medicine. That’s what it’s actually called – Dogma – which literally means ‘ a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true’. As with religious dogma, we now know that very little things in this world are incontrovertibly true.

So the topic of gentics is complex. There is an inherited genetic passing down, a code that gets transmitted form parent to child and on. However there is an evolutionary ability of nature to alter the expression of the genes. In order for the DNA to fit into the center of every cell it has to fundamentally be wound up. DNA gets wound up by little wheels called histones. These Histones can be wound tighter or looser, which will determine which parts of the DNA can be accessed. Histones also have ‘tails’ that can hold different protein strands which change their behaviour even further. Another factor that can effect gene expression is the Methylation of the DNA strands. This is basically the sheath that covers the DNA and prevents it from breaking apart and being read by the RNA. It’s like the sheath on a sword. While it’s covered you can’t use it. Same with DNA!

Both these DNA ‘holders’ (sheaths and spools) completely control the expression of the DNA itself. The environment (including every thought and emotion) can effect these sheaths and spools. Below find two diagrams of how the DNA gets wound around the histones into chromosomes and also a closer look at the histone tails and how different proteins can become attached to the tails creating different histone behaviours.

Genetically Inherited

Much of the DNA sheaths and the spooling gets wiped in the pass down form parents to children, however there is still much of the information encoded upon the histone’s tails that is maintained. So you can inherit the actual DNA code as well as the environmentally altered DNA spools from your parents. So if your mother or father have recorded information onto the DNA histone tails then you can find yourself having those same markers. There is no such thing as a blank slate – but there is also no such thing as helpless determinism – we are quantum creatures in control and able to interact with our genetics in ways most people would be petrified at. So the parental guidance here is not that you do whatever and so long as you don’t tell your children about it it’s fine!! NO that is not the case, everything you do gets encoded and processed into your DNA management system (the Histones and the Mythyl groups). Yes much gets wiped on the pass down to the embryo, but not all. Then you have the quantum entangled nature to consider. Even if everything is wiped, the nature of entanglement might create a quantum environment that encourages the genes in the new born to start to mimic the sheathings and spooling (and tail proteins) of the parents. There’s no escape – be yourself, be true and live your life or as Carl Jung says our children will be destined to live our unlived lives. See Bruce Lipton’s Biology of Belief for a good read on the topic.

The main question people should be asking is not “do I influence my genes” but “how can I shine my truth to allow for the authentic expression of my full evolved potential”