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Quote of the Week
(February 3, 2025)

Rather than think of epigenetics as the application of incidental “marks” on chromosomes, we could conceive it more realistically as encompassing all the ways DNA is caught up in the activity of its larger context and brought into service of the whole. I say “more realistically” because there is, in fact — as two molecular biologists have phrased it in the journal Nature — “an avalanche of biochemical evidence revealing a complex and versatile array of molecular mechanisms that regulate gene expression without changing DNA sequences”.

In other words, what genes mean to the organism is not merely a matter of the DNA sequence or a “genetic code”. It is more a question of the many different ways an organism can employ its genes.

So the word epigenetics may usefully remind us that what is “on top of” DNA is nothing less than the functioning organism as a whole. But a word that threatens to encompass just about everything begins to lose its value as a special term. And this in turn suggests that we could just as well retire the word “epigenetics” and get on with describing how organisms carry out their organically integrated lives — express their own character — in part by “reconceiving” their genes in terms of that character.

(from Chapter 7, “Epigenetics: A Brief Introduction”, in Organisms and Their Evolution — Agency and Meaning in the Drama of Life)

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