Shown above is “The Epigenetics Revolution,” which is about the missing link between nature and nurture. Photo courtesy of Columbia.

New approach toward evolution and life

When the human genome project was wrapped up midway through 2000, there were hope and hype that we would be able to achieve medical miracles of curing all diseases.

Back then, former U.S. President Bill Clinton showed such expectations by saying, “Today we are learning the language in which God created life.”

Such optimism is understandable because the completion of the human genome project gave scientists a glimpse into the blueprint for humankind.

However, Clinton’s statement proved premature as the blueprint was not enough to explain and predict everything _ we have found that there is something else.

And “The Epigenetics Revolution” is about “something else.”

“Whenever two genetically identical individuals are non-identical in some way we can measure, this is called epigenetics,” the book notes.

Its author Nessa Carey points out that the publication is about “the missing link between nature and nurture.”

The book concludes that the epigenetics revolution would define us.

“Science is a human endeavor, and sometimes it goes wrong. But at the end of the next 10 years, we will understand more of the answers to some of biology’s most important questions,” it says.

“Right now, we really can’t predict what those answers might be, and in some cases, we’re not even sure of the questions, but one thing is for sure. The epigenetics revolution is underway.”

Carey expects that researchers will delve into epigenetics throughout this century.

“In biology, Darwin and Mendel came to define the 19th century as the era of evolution and genetics: Watson and Crick defined the 20th century as the era of DNA, and the functional understanding of how genetics and evolution interact,” the book reads.

“But in the 21st century, it is the new scientific discipline of epigenetics that is unraveling so much of what we took as dogma and rebuilding it in an infinitely more varied, more complex, and even more beautiful fashion.”
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