Question: Who discovered the epingenetics in human cells?

Asked by science2011321 to Kate on 17 Jun 2011.

1

  1. Photo: Kate PattersonKate Patterson
    answered on 17 Jun 2011:

    Hi science2011321

    That’s a great question, and I went into the lab to ask the others what they thought of this too.
    Warwick in our lab thought of Conrad Waddington, who in the 1930s described epigenetics as a ‘metaphor for how gene regulation controls development.’ This was pretty amazing because in the 1930s people did not even understand what DNA did, let alone gene regulation! It wasn’t until 1953 before Watson and Crick even discovered the double helix structure of DNA.

    http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrad_Hal_Waddington

    Then, there’s also Robin Holliday http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Holliday (whose daughter recently did some work in our lab) who discovered the first epigenetic function in 1975 called “methylation”. “methylation” happens on DNA, where a tiny molecule sticks to the DNA and causes changes to that gene.

    Since then, lots and lots of work has been done on epigenetics and DNA “methylation” and we now know that this epigenetic function goes really wrong in cancer cells and other diseases too.

    Hope this helps!

    0

Comments

  1. Photo: science2011321science2011321
    commented on 19 Jun 2011:

    Thankyou for your answer, and it does help a lot in my understandings of epigenetics functions! 🙂

    0

  2. Photo: KateKate
    commented on 19 Jun 2011:

    Great! thanks for that science2011321 🙂

    0

  3. Photo: admin_kristinadmin_kristin
    commented on 20 Jun 2011:

    If you’re interested in learning more about genes and genetics, visit the TechNyou site for more info: http://technyou.edu.au/

    0