DNA. Epigenetics may, for example, explain how one identical twin develops schizophrenia whereas the other does not.
Epigenetics prevails but the drugs that were being developed were not fashioned around the control of the epigenome.
For example, work in the field of epigenetics demonstrates that environment can have a profound influence on how DNA impacts biology.
That is called epigenetics and is controlled by environmental factors such a temperature, solar radiation exposure or food or lack of food.
This insight is fueling the rise of a field called epigenetics, which is rapidly confounding any simple separation between genes and the environment.
Case in point: This week some notable scientist bloggers unloaded on a book review in the Guardian of The Epigenetics Revolution by Nessa Carey.
It is possible to enhance mental and physical performance via epigenetics.
It may well be that epigenetics provides part of the answer.
Now, from a pedagogical perspective, this is a good point: it is easy to see why epigenetics might sound exciting to the press (and book publishers).
With billions of biotechnology research dollars and drug profits involved, was the story about epigenetics hidden from public view for commercial gain and concerns about overpopulation?
Glaxo has projects on everything from stem cells to gene therapy for rare immune diseases to an emerging area called epigenetics, which looks at how genes are modified.
Even the recently observed phenomenon of intergenerational epigenetics, which at first sight looks like the inheritance of acquired characteristics (a real Darwinian no-no), probably has less to it than meets the eye.
"Curcumin, no matter how we measured it, was either comparable to sodium diclofenac or slightly better, " says co-author Ajay Goel, director of the Department of Epigenetics and Cancer Research at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas.
"The development of different bees from the same DNA in the larvae is one of the clearest examples of epigenetics in action - mechanisms that go beyond the basic DNA sequence, " said co-author Mark Dickman from the University of Sheffield.
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