Epigenetics: Unraveling the Mysteries of Nature & Nurture | Natalia Husby | TEDxUniversityofDelaware
foreign [Music] have you ever wondered how two genetically identical twins can be so drastically different and what about how your everyday lifestyle choices can potentially increase your risk for developing diseases like cancer or Alzheimer's or diabetes and what about how traumatic life experiences can affect the way you navigate personal relationships and manage stress decades down the road thankfully epigenetics can help answer how all of this works so to break it down into simpler terms Epi means upon while genetics is the study of your genes and your DNA so epigenetics is just a word used to describe the changes that happen around our DNA you can think about it like this the human genome your entire collection of your genes is like a music library and each song in that library is a gene just like how each song in your music library has its own unique individual meaning to you that uniquely impacts you our genes do the same thing and just like how different people Express themselves with different styles of music our cells Express themselves with different kinds of genes and this is where epigenetics comes in epigenetics is what creates that unique playlist of genes for each cell type and this control creates a very powerful influence on your biology because how your genes are expressed affects how your cells work which affects how they interact with one another which affects your physical health your mental health your behavior how you interact with others and how you interact with your environment you can think about these biological factors like their characters in a musical and while each character plays a different role of varying importance unified music they come together to tell a story that is unique to you your health and your personality but it's not just a one-way Street it doesn't just go from your genes to your cells up through to your behavior and so forth but the external Factor so the air you breathe the foods you eat the people you interact with the everyday decisions you make all feeds back down and changes your epigenetics which can also change your physical health and your mental health so these external factors they're kind of like the instruments in a musical and while you don't see them during the show they're still changing and impacting the overall message of your story too so epigenetics has been studied for the last few decades but the explosion and Catalyst for its explosion has been the genetic Revolution so not too long ago scientists completely mapped out the entire Human Genome and with this major Milestone accomplished many of the scientific and medical communities thought that the answers to finding all disease cures could be found in our genes where we're quickly finding out that this isn't the case because epigenetic mechanisms are also involved in disease development but they're often overlooked epigenetics actually can help us answer a lot of different questions across different fields of science so what makes somebody more naturally resistant to a strain of covid whereas somebody else when exposed to the same strain ends up hospitalized and what about crops why is it that some crops survive drastic environmental changes while some might perish more quickly the rise of epigenetics and epigenetic Technologies has brought about some really exciting and Innovative Technologies used to study epigenetics and improve potential treatments for cancer and all kinds of diseases and the difference of epigenetic Technologies over genomic Technologies is that they tell you how genes are getting selected so with genomic Technologies they kind of tell you like what song is being added to the cellular Library but knowing which Gene is involved a disease or which song is not enough we also need to understand how they're getting selected for diseases and that's what epigenomic technologies offer us and while there's some really great Technologies out there two of them are called Cut and Run and cut and tag and some of these advantages are that they work with a very small number of cells and they can be modified to study as little as one single cell at a time so think about that for a second one malfunctioning cell is all it takes for cancer to develop and now we have the ability to study the unique processes happening in that cell that lead to the development of cancer some of you may know somebody who is battling or has battled cancer before you're probably aware that not everybody responsible to certain treatments right this is because different people have different epigenetic profiles and by using these new technologies we can start to develop treatments that are more individualized more precise and more effective for people who just don't respond well to the conventional treatments available but the potential applications of epigenetics don't stop there whether you study Neuroscience toxicology Immunology agriculture drug development embryology it's so crucial that we start applying these techniques because they can help us start to unravel the Mysteries surrounding how our biology our environments and our experiences all interact to shape living things every day by understanding how these epigenetic processes work we could potentially prevent or reverse the negative outcomes associated with early life childhood abuse we could potentially understand how environmental factors and toxicants in our environment impact our health and development and find ways to prevent those negative changes from happening we can even potentially cure devastating diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's and by the way the amazing thing about epigenetics is it doesn't just affect you and those around you but scientists have found that it can be passed down across Generations too so for example survivors of traumatic experiences like the Rwandan Genocide and the Holocaust A lot of those people develop PTSD as a result of those terrible experiences and then their own children who had not gone through that experience in their lifetime also showed symptoms of PTSD and had higher levels of cortisol the stress hormone so parents grandparents and future parents keep in mind that your life experiences don't just end with you but there's a potential of passing those down to Future Generations too but don't worry because you can pass down good experiences too and the beauty of epigenetics is that you can change and you can adapt and you can actually take control of your epigenetics reverse those negative outcomes by doing things like going to therapy exercising eating healthy taking medication and isn't that so powerful that these decisions you make in your life can make such a massive impact in your biology and gives you that control to better yourself and so my hope for you all today is that your curiosity about epigenetics has been ignited for those of you that are in science I hope that this inspires you to apply epigenetics research to your academic studies and your lab work and for most of you who are probably not in science I hope this makes you want to learn more about epigenetics in general and the next time you find yourself sitting in your car listening to your favorite playlist take that opportunity to reflect on your lifestyle feel empowered by your choices and decide to take control of that cellular playlist by living your healthiest best lives for yourself and for future Generations thank you [Applause]