are the bases… And yet… there's more to this tiny story than meets the eye. OR the

rest of the body.

In April of 1953, the double-helix of deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA was announced in the journal "Nature."

The discovery of the building blocks of life was celebrated worldwide, and earned James

Watson and Watson Crick a Nobel Prize, which they shared with Maurice Wilkins. Shout out

to Rosalind Franklin for discovering the final piece of the Watson-Crick model, the helical

structure. Tons of scientists and scholars worked on the discovery of hereditary biology

for almost a century. If you've taken high school biology, you know DNA and genes are

used to create proteins which carry out physiological functions in cells. Watson and Crick's final

model indicated just HOW this molecule is the most basic structure life -- we thought

DNA was like, the One Ring that rules them all… but new research from the University

of Edinburgh, published in Science, found DNA might just be a part of the puzzle of

biological inheritance.

All humans carry 2 meters of DNA in each of their cell nuclei (except in sperm and egg

cells, of course). That's a fantastic amount of genetic information. In fact, if you do

the math, the human body contains 100 trillion meters of DNA per person. That's enough to

make a line of DNA to the sun and back 300 times. Similar to a rope, it can get tangled

if you don't store it properly, so nature figured out an efficient means of storage.

The DNA molecule carries a negative charge, so (like my hair to a balloon) DNA is attracted

to these positively charged proteins called histones and form what looks like little beads

on a string. We've known this for decades, but this new study found these histones are

more than they seem.

DNA wraps itself around the histones like a spool, storing the DNA safely and decreasing

its length by seven times, but it's not just for storage. It also can determine what genes

near each histone are switched on or off. Now, for the first time ever, research uncovered

histones can affect how DNA is expressed not just in me, but in my offspring! This discovery

finds that DNA isn't the lonely hero of inherited traits after all, but a member of a team.

Assuming I'm a yeast cell, of course.

By manipulating the histones inside yeast cells, researchers were able to follow how

that affected the gene expression from one generation to the next. Essentially, if they

messed with a histone, and that switched off some genes nearby, they could see those same

switches were off in the next generation of yeast too! Proving the histones are inherited

and were affecting gene expression in the yeast's offspring.

Histones' effects on gene expression was known, but that it is inherited is groundbreaking!

Histones are a major driver of epigenetics through a process called histone methylation.

When amino acids link up with histones, they'll help switch on or off genes and which affects

genetic expression, DNA transcription (or copying), and thus ultimately the organism

as a whole. And it's inherited! We already know histone methylation can be affected by

stress and diet; that's basic epigenetics, but if scientists can show histones are inherited

like DNA in humans, then we might be getting our first glimpse into how YOUR stress could

affect your kids, and their kids! WOW!

Does this stress you out? STOP BEING STRESSED! Its affecting your grandkids!

On the other hand, so what if you're stressed. We're getting so good at genetic modifications,

we should be able to just go in and tweak our kids anyway? Right? Julianna, debate the

merits of designer genetic babies in THIS video (soundup)

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