25. October 2025
Another way of looking at epigenetics is like this. While traditional genetics describes the way the DNA sequences in our genes are passed from one generation to the next, epigenetics describes passing on the way the genes are used. To make a computer analogy, think of epigenetics as metadata, information describing and ordering the underlying data. If you own an MP3 player for example, it will contain a lot of data, the MP3 files. Think of these as analogous to genes. But you will also...
06. December 2020
Biological age is a measure of lifestyle, habits, and innate factors that cause us to age. How an individual’s biological age should be measured and what factors should be included and weighted to calculate a biological age continues to be of great interest to researchers. Today, it is understood that individuals experience different rates of aging resulting from progressive deterioration, occurring simultaneously at the molecular, cellular, tissue, organ, and functional levels. This is...
06. December 2020
Tobacco use remains one of the most important risk factors for developing serious conditions such as heart disease, lung disease, and cancer. Due to its influence on health, underwriting places significant value on identifying tobacco exposure among life insurance applicants. Accordingly, the life insurance industry widely screens for tobacco use by testing with the biomarker cotinine, a metabolite of nicotine, in an applicant’s clinical chemistry panel. The challenge with measuring cotinine...
03. December 2020
In February 1997, a sheep called Dolly became the most famous example of her species, briefly even becoming a TV celebrity. The reason for her fame is that she was the first mammal to be “created” by a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer, or in other words the first man-made clone (man-made to be distinct from identical twins, who are natural clones). The process leading to her birth required a mature oocyte (a unfertilised egg) from one female sheep and an ordinary cell from the...
03. December 2020
As we have seen from the roundworm example, epigenetic effects (in this case extended lifespan) can sometimes be passed from one generation to the next, although the effects only seem to last for a few generations. Are there examples where epigenetic effects carry over to subsequent generations in humans or other mammals? There is some evidence that the effects of the Dutch Hunger Winter affected grandchildren of women who were pregnant during the famine. Similarly, in a study of a 19th century...
03. December 2020
Angelmann and Prader-Willi syndromes are two distinct genetic conditions with different symptoms, both caused by loss of a part of chromosome 15. Children who inherit one copy of this faulty chromosome develop either Angelmann or Prader-Willi syndrome, despite having a normal copy of the chromosome from their other parent. So how does the same mutation (loss of part of chromosome 15) lead to these two different conditions? The answer lies in the discovery that this particular piece of...
03. December 2020
A bit of genetics that most of us know about is what makes a boy a boy, and a girl a girl. It’s the X and Y chromosomes. At the very beginning of our existence each of us received one X chromosome from our Mums via the egg, and while the girls received another X chromosome from their dads, via the sperm, the boys got a Y chromosome. The Y chromosome in the cells of a male embryo directs it to develop into a boy, while with two X and no Y chromosome the female embryo develops into a girl. Now,...
03. December 2020
Epigenetics is an area where our scientific knowledge is rapidly increasing. One thing that scientists have discovered is that epigenetic errors are common in diseases such as cancer and in ageing cells. As a result, scientists are developing medicines that target faulty epigenomes and one of the first examples is the use of HDAC inhibitors, similar to the compound found in royal jelly. From the study of strange patterns of inheritance such as genetic imprinting, the yellow/agouti Avy mouse,...