Ghost in the Genetic Machine: Humans

and uh. In the last episode, we we really went down and discussed us some of what's actually happening at that the genetic level, uh, what is happening at the epigenetic level, and then and then how all of that expresses itself in the phenome, which is who and what we are? What? How an organism exists, it's phenotype. So in this episode we're going to talk about studies that have involved humans that's and uh and exactly how we see epigenetic changes carried on from one generation to the next.

And it really gets down to discussions about how much choice do I have? Mean any discussion of epigenetics and nature and nurture, there's this undercurrent of free will to what extent in my shackle do my genes? To what

extent is everything about me? Just laid out in the original code work that was that came together in the womb, and then how much of it is, and then how much of it is also out of my hands because of the environment that I am in, in the environment that I'm raised in, the environment that I grow up in, or as we're going to discuss more the environment that my mother grew up in, or the or that that her mother grew up in, right, like, how much of it is? Uh, it's just sort of set in stone

to a certain extent before we even have a SASA. Yeah, I'm glad you brought up the free will angle about this too, because when we look at epigenetics UM, it does sort of bring into question to what degree UM are we just sort of dealing with on off switches of our genes and how they're expressed, and how much

of this um is a genetically clean slate. Because it used to be that we would assume that, of course you would you would get your eye color, or your hair color, or the tone of your skin from your parents, from your grandparents, so on and so forth. But you wouldn't necessarily have thought that the things that your mother and father did as ten year olds would matter to you. But in fact it does, and we'll discuss that. Yeah, and then there's a certain amount of magical thinking, uh

in all of this as well. There's always you know, these old ideas that die really hard, that the apple never falls far from the tree kind of a thing. You know, if the if the father was a criminal, then the son is destined to be a criminal, you know that kind of thing. If the and if the mother was was a genius and just in a multitasker or whatever you know, accolades you want to throw at her, then surely the offspring will have that as well. And uh,

it's not as simple as that, right. There's a psychological component to this that we will talk about. But right now we're going to talk more about the physiological component. In in order to do we're just gonna do a quick overview of epigenetics. Um. Epigenetics is the study of gene expression and how it can vary from what generation. Epigenetics means in addition to the genes. In addition to genetics,

Eppie above the genome. Right, so you've got the genome with all the d n A, the sequence that is that does not change, and then you have the material as you had pointed out before that's between the genome and the epigenome. And these are the proteins. These are the flip switching areas of gene expression that can be passed down to another generation. I'm going to use a different metaphor this time. It just occurs to me. Um, Okay, think of say three Rock the TV show, right, lovely

just ended, just ended, very sad. Alright, So imagine this. Lislemon comes up with a script for that night's show, and you can think of that script as the is the genome, all right, it's the genetic code. It says what is going to happen. Right, Let's say that that script and passes over Jack Donneghe's desk, her boss's desk, and he says, well, given the current political or business environment, I'm gonna make this change and this change and this

change and this change and this change. And now this is the script that you're going to actually film. And then the version of the show that you see, the version that is filmed, that is the that is the finished organism. So he's the He's the methyl group that attaches to the protein that turns on or off different aspects of the script. Right, So we talked about DNA methylation in the last episode, but we won't talk about

it too much here. Yeah, it's basically the epigenome involves and I'm gonna personify things a little bit here, but it's meddling. It's meddling based on environmental stimuli. Environmental stimuli that may include, uh, that may be nutritional, it may have to do with angry, dangerous predators in the environment, stress in the environment, or or various chemicals that are

interacting with the with the organism's body. Yeah, and this is why one member of a pair of identical twins can develop a bipolar disorder or asthma, even though the other is fine. Right, This is epigenetics really helps to explain why this happens because some of these uh, these the epigenetic changes are taking place in the womb and they're more or less set for that that organisms life, but other switches are coming on can come on and

off throughout that that organisms life. So even though Jack donaghy made this the script changes this week. The environment might change, you get a new president in office, or they're different business concerns, and then he might not make the same changes the following week. All right, So when we talk about epigenetic changes and we talk about them and humans. One of the best ways to really look at this in detail is to look at the Dutch famine,

which happened during full World War two. We're talking about between nineteen forty four and nine. And the reason why researchers wanted to look at the Dutch famine and the families that were involved is because what do we have here. We have an environmental condition and such as famine that could greatly impact not just that generation, but the next

generation and how it's phenotypes, its attributes, those genes are expressed. Yeah, because the situation is here that researchers were seeing persistent health problems six decades following UH, this UH Dutch hunger

winter as it's called. The research has found that children exposed to famine during the first ten weeks following conception had less DNA methylation of the imprinted i g F two gene than the children of the same sex, siblings of the same sex they were unexposed to these conditions, that's right. So in other words, that DNA methylation was the process that that sort of attached to the proteins to turn on or off that gene and so in

this instance they had less of it. In other words, this DNA methylation wasn't able to UM to actually sort of protect them, and so that this i g F huge gene was able to express itself a lot more in those children who experienced malnutrition. Now, likewise, children they were exposed to these famine conditions at the end of pregnancy, they showed no difference in the methylation compared to siblings that were unexposed. So it's interesting to see, like see

what stage and development those those triggers are flipped. Now, UM this was in the Netherlands, and again this is wor World two. This was a great experiment for the researchers at Columbia University UM Public School of Health to to really and the Legan University excuse me, Medical Center in Netherlands to really look at this data because they could see which families UM had the most food in the least food during that embargo UH in the Netherlands.

That is one example of what happens when you have UM a dearth of food. Right. But what what one researcher did, Dr Lars all of Vigrant is he looked at these overclax youth in Rboten, which is a Swedish providence, and he wanted to see how much food was available to these kids. Now, Bigrant is a preventive health specialist, and what he did is he drew a random sample of nine individuals born in this Overcallips parish in their boating in nineteen o five, and he used historical records

to trace their parents and grandparents back to birth. So these are meticulous agricultural records. And what they found is that some of these kids had a lot of food available to them during winters. Some kids did not. They begin they had sort of a stasis of um impoverished food resources available to them. So what you see is is one line of kids who who can be sort of gluttonous and eat a large amount at certain times,

and another line just that continue on right. So you would think that the kids who weren't getting a lot of nutrition for for the entire period, that they might be the ones that were affected here adversely affected. But actually actually the kids who over eight who we see in successive generations having the problems with their genes switching on. And when I talk about this, uh, these genes switching on and off. I'm talking about diabetes. I'm talking about

shorter lifespans. In fact, Bagrant found that kids who went from normal eating to gluttonous eating had produced grandsons who died in average of six years earlier than the grandsons of those who who had endured a poor harvest. And then by Grant and his team controlled for certain socio economic variations, and when they did that, the difference in longevity actually jumped to an astonishing thirty two years. Okay, So again, what we're seeing here is significant drops in lifespans.

And they also found evidence of it occurring on the female line as well. So that means that the daughters and the granddaughters of girls who had gone from normal

to gluttonous diets also live shorter lives. And of course the study is important is we look at our own dietary changes here to over the past and well in the past decade, like here in the United States, as we're looking at at at the generational changes in the approach to food and approach the diet and uh, and you kind of I mean in the sort of do it yourself, fix it up, and improve your life kind

of attitude. You want to think, well, all right, I used to eat this way, I'm now I'm gonna now I'm eating better, I'm eating smarter, or I I don't have the diet that my parents had or the diet that my grandparents had, But you're still, to a certain extent kind of shackled to their diet, which is which is potentially scary. Yeah. Well, and I think that's why we have seen such a spike and OBEs and diabetes in any very young children, you know, as young as

five years old, six years old. Um, so some of them are saddled with these genes that are flipped on and off because of parents and previous generations eating habits or ability to to get nutrition. So this guy b Igrant, he he did these studies and then he hooked up with Dr Marcus Pembrey, and he's a geneticist at the universe A College in London, and he dared to ask, well, what if the environmental pressures and social changes of the industrial age had become so powerful the evolution had begun

to demand that our genes respond faster. So they hooked up and they found out a punch of really very interesting things. Yeah, this one about smoking, particularly interesting. And this one was two thousand six published in the European Journal of Human Genetics. And uh, I mean, it's it's one thing to realize that, yes, smoking, which of course is a a major thing for your body to have

to deal with. It's easy to imagine our especially best one what we've talked about here, to imagine smoking triggering certain epigenetic changes in the body and then those, uh, those those changes being transgenerational, passing on to the next

generation or potentially to generations beyond that. But what was really crazy about this particular study is that they were looked at like over fourteen thousand fathers in the study, and a hundred and sixty six of them had started smoking before the age of a and that's so that's before their bodies were actually preparing to enter puberty. And

uh and and already these changes were taking taking place. Yeah, because it turns out that that um, if they are affecting their body in an adverse way i e. Smoking at this age and they began to form sperm, they began to make it. That is when that sperm, that genetic material is going to be informed by that outside environmental condition of smoking, and that it's crazy to think

about a ten year old who is smoking. I mean, I'm assuming pretty regularly here, because you know, it would have to be in order to have such a marked imprint on the genetic material. But that's crazy to think that a ten year could be affecting his future offspring

at that moment. Yeah, And it also it really throws this another, this other idea on its head, this sort of idea like when you're a kid that you know a lot of a lot of stuff that happened when you're young is gonna is gonna affect who you are as an adult, obviously, but you you kind of sort of writing a certain amount of room for mistakes, like, oh, I can I can start smoking when i'm young and quit later, and if I can quit, then great, then

I'm done with that. Or you know, you can you can do maybe kind of stupid things when you're ten years old and it's not going to really have as as much impact on your later life, but already it's having an effect on your children when you're tent And that's a that's really eye opening to think about. Yeah, I mean, because those kids who took up smoking that early, they had, um, they had kids who had a much higher risk for ab city, and they had other health

problems well into adulthood and shorter lifespans. So what's amazing about the study is that they had fourteen thousand individuals and that's a very large sample, and year after year they were able to look at the offspring and the parents here and look at them in terms of like their bone density, how much they weighed, with their bits were, and they were able to track them over a number of years, and so they got an amazing amount of data that can show them very clearly that um, you know,

some of the genes were flipped on or off in these instances. I also ran across the study talking about cocaine use UM and in this way that this experiment they were using mice, So these were cocaine using mice, and they found that in these mice, the mice would develop memory problems, they would pass on three generations um

due to these epigenetic changes. So there's another another example of something where you know, one might think, oh, well, the the sins of one's youth, uh, you know, they'll they'll they'll be ramifications for that, but you tend not to think of three generations worth the ramifications for you know, your your drug hat. You know, I can't figure out whether or not this is comforting or just really problematic.

Well to understand it at this level, you know, I think it's I think it's a little column calum b. I mean, it's you know, and we'll we'll get into this a little more before we close out the podcast. But um, but even as we continue to map out um so many of these these things that make us who we are, all these different environmental changes and all and the things written in our genes, they contribute to us. There, I mean, ultimately, you're gonna have to roll with what

you get. So, I mean there, at the end of the day, you you can worry about it a lot. You can worry about, Okay, well what what what my child genetics? What were they? And then then how am I nurturing this child? And and it becoming this battle of of of nurture and nature, and then you can you can kind of over analyze everything. Uh, but at the end of the day, you're you're gonna have to

roll with it. Yeah, I know. And I realized this because my daughter has been asking about death a lot lately and so you know, the question do sure this morning was you know, what are the various ways that

you know people die? Or how do people die? In So it's trying to tell her with you know, with her four year old mind, and I was trying to explain to her disease, which was very hard for her to get her mind real She wanted to know if insects gave her diseases, and of course yes, I know, I thought, well technically in some cases, but I said no, because of course I don't want her to be friend of every ladybug and mosquito that she says she's she's lying around. So anyway, I need to know basis at

four years old. But I began to think about this. I began to think, well, you know, as she gets older, she can have a more nuanced understanding of epi genetics, and certainly, you know, when she reaches age twenty, there should be a lot that can be uncovered about not just my epi genetics, but hers and and perhaps you know, various other offspring and trying to figure out, um, sort of what the sins of the mother and father were. Yeah, and it can I mean, it's can certainly be uh,

perplexing to think about two. I mean, for instance, uh, my wife and I are in the process of adopting a child and uh, and so in that situation, the nurturing, of course is going to be almost you know, entirely on us. There's there's a certain amount of time there that we're not in the picture obviously. But but then of course the genetics, the nature aspect of it is

almost entirely out of our hands. So it can lead to a certain amount of worry and perplection over over the nature versus nurture, over the epigenetic changes that that that we can contribute to and and those that have already uh you know, left the train station. But again, at the end of the day, you gotta roll with it. So that's true, that's true. You can't over worry about it. Um. But of course, you know, you gotta roll with what

you get genetically. But you also have to roll with which you get in terms of emotional baggage when it comes to our parents, our ancestors. And this is where we of course discussed the ancestor syndrome. But before we talk about this, we should probably take a quick break and uh, we'll be right back. All right, we're back, and we're going to talk now about a little something called ancestor syndrome and about some of the more almost philosophical aspects of genetic memory um and uh, or even

you know, racial memory if you want. And in this we can't help but think about Carl Young, whom he had, of course, his theory of the collective unconscious, and that this idea that there's this level of unconscious beyond a personal unconscious, beyond our own subconscious, that is shared by a society. That's uh, that's ship, that's written in our ancestry, and it's uh, it's the reservoir of experiences and beliefs, um,

you know, what have you. That we're ruled over by all these various universal archetypes that while the particulars of them may change, the the idea of the archetype is is just embedded in our in our history. And and so Young talked a good bit about racial unconscious, racial memory and uh. And there's a certain amount of this

to be interpreted when we start looking at epigenetics. It should be because you know, we don't have scientific evidence to say that our ancestors actual emotional experiences were passed down to us. We can say that the environmental conditions could flip the switch, because I mean, that's a scary thought right there, because everyone has their emotional things in

any lineage that are going to be problematic. Be it you know, your uncle, you know, your your great great grandfather was a king who had his head cut off, or your great great grandfather was, you know, a poor miner in West Virginia just struggling to make ends me, you know. Yeah. And it's those kind of like forbearers autobiographies that help put together this idea that, um, we do have these experiences passed down to us via stories

and that makes an impact on our psyches. UM and aunt Selin Schutzenburger, she is a professor emeritus at the University of Nice and France. She's actually ninety years old now, but she coined the term psycho genealogy. And this is this idea that there are these subtle ways in which we impact generations of offspring, and the idea that all family groups share an inherent tendency to transmit those elements

necessary for the continued survival of the group. So you know, the group, the tribe, the family has ideas, traditions, certain things that it does over and over again to ensure the survival of this identity and through stories, wills, even a will is a story, right, Um. Again, traditions, that's a really big part of it. So Schutzenberg describes the theory of invisible loyalty as being something that is owed to previous generations and that this is a catalyst for

unwittingly re enacting the life events of our ancestors. This is the idea that you have this invisible loyalty to a great your grandmother Josephine, who this is the first circus acrobat, I don't know, um, And you begin to think you can begin to take on these characteristics for yourself. So I think it's interesting because, um, you know, a child is born, it doesn't necessarily have any sort of identity. It's got its genetic identity. It's god, it's phenotypes that

are expressed turn on and off. But then we begin to sort of do these are a layer, these memories on top of this child to make the identity. And that's all good and fine if the child is good with this identity, but it if if it is not, then of course, this is where we see conflict. Yeah, and uh, I mean I can't help but think too about various materials I've read about the the so called quote unquote scar of adoption that that did anyone. And

this is this scenaria where people argue both sides. But there's this argument that that any adopted child who comes to know about their adoption, that there is a certain emotional scar there that's just unavoidable because I mean, it is a it becomes that person's personal history and they have to fit themselves into this grander story of their lineage.

So well, and what's interesting about this is, uh, there's a psychotherapist, Moliki Coleman, and she says that a child is doated on with an emotional and psychological DNA CHAN from its parents and family, which enables the child to function successfully in that particular family context. So if you have a child who is adopted, then the then already the child is forming this store that they didn't fit into the family context or can a child can? I

should should say that doesn't always happen. So that's the struggle there, I think for trying to figure out where a child fits in. Now you know, a child who is not adopted I think still feels this way. Yeah. Yeah, that's one thing to always keep in mind, is that is that any child is going to struggle with who they are and what they are and the possibility that their mom is actually a princess and not the mother

that they have in their life. UM. You see, you see that kind of situate because of my my younger sister who is who's not adopted. UM. But she would form these stories in her head about how she was actually the secret built more child. I think this was after my my family, like we went and saw the Built More emation and Nashville, and so she had this story that she began to form that she was secretly

wanted to build more children that was her real family. UM. So you see that kind of personal myth making, um, you know, in various levels, be it being an adopted situation or birth parents situation. So now, my my brother told me when I was six years old that I was adopted and I had blonde hair at that time and my family dark hair, blue eyes in um. And then he went through this whole sham thing and pretended he couldn't find my birth certificate and produced his I mean, wow,

that was elaborate. It was yeah, that that's the kind of kid he is. But um, but yeah, I mean every I think at some point every child and adult feels like a black sheep with their family. And so that you do get this emotional baggage, and you do get these stories that are passed down that are like this sort of genetic memory. And I put that air quotes right, because this is sort of like this layering of information over you. And this leads us to magical

thinking of course. Oh yeah, we get into, of course, the idea of law contage. And we discussed this to a certain extent in the past two about the eye. It gets into the whole area of like the powder of sympathy and the idea that that you could you could treat a wound by treating the weapon that caused the wound, or that by coming into contact with with with somebody you can can you can contract um they're

sort of spiritual or mental funk. Yeah. And so if you have something that is uh, your ancestors, if you have artwork or some sort of piece of thing that's there's it feels like it has this magical quality to it as it brings with it all of this psychic uh sort of baggage um that your family is carrying around with them all the time. Yeah. I mean that's the thing about stuff and things. We we attached so much importance to them, and then uh and and and and that has a definite impact on on how we

think about that. I mean, case in point, uh, my father's wristwatch um that he he was wearing when he died, and and I have been wearing it for the past a couple of years, and then the other day it stopped ticking, like the battery went dead in it, which is something I knew had happened eventually. I knew it didn't have like a you know, an atomic um battery

in there or anything. But when it stopped working, it's like I became real emotional, like in spite of myself knowing that this was going to happen, but it u But there was this this aspect that this was an artifact that was somehow embodied with a sense of him, and that it had kept ticking, and that therefore part of him was still ticking in it, even though on you know, half of me just dismisses that as who he even as I say it, there's a part of

me that still really buys into that well. And I think that's what that that's the point here is like that we should underscore is that our our families, family autobiography is very powerful stuff. And so we talk about things at the genetic level, and we talked about environmental aspects of it. And certainly we can see the phenotype expressed under pressure, but there is the psychological pressure too.

And as you had noted at the top of the podcast, you know, if we tell our stories the same, if we tell ourselves the same stories all the time, like my family is this and we do this, Um, you know, we're geniuses, then you begin to perform that part or we're bank robbers. I'm gonna go rob the bank. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if anybody actually thinks that,

but but yes, to a certain extent it. I think there comes apart in anyone's life where you have to stop believing the story about yourself that people were telling you and start writing your own story, or at least editing that story, applying in a way at the genetic changes to the story you're given become the Jack Donaghye

of your own script exactly. He has become the Jack Donna gave your own scrip script and say you know what, Uh yeah, I mean I feel like there was a part in my life where I was where I had to say, you know what, I'm I'm I'm a really good writer, and that's gonna be my thing, and that's my story, and and it becomes your story, you know, within a liminated you know stint, I couldn't say now I'm going to be the president the United States that maybe maybe not. You gotta you gotta level your your

dreams with your abilities. But but there does come a point where you have to you have to, I think, rewrite that story otherwise you're just gonna be shackled to this old story. And that's where that's where actually some of Schultzenberger's work comes into play, where she was examining

things like quote unquote family curses. I'm probably doing too many air quotes in this podcast, I apologize, but you know, looking into ideas of family curses and and things of this nature and looking at that that it really having to do with buying into a story, into into a into a lineage, and letting that influence who you think you are. That's interesting. That's like the Kennedy curse, right if you look at that. Yes, a bunch of things happened in their family, but they have a very large

family living in a very different way. Um. Well, and of course slavery in America is a big thing too, because you have something, I mean, among racial divides. You have individuals who go back in time and you find slavery or you find slavers, and it continues and will continue to be a problematic aspect of kind of our psychohistory. This is true. All right. Well, there you go. Two

episodes that we've done now about epigenetics UM. And I think you know this supplies a good starting point for everyone to really think about genetic changes, epigenetic changes um nature versus nurture in sort of a larger uh theme. So if you if you want to learn a little bit more, you want to rehash some of the details, do check out the article UM, how epigenetics works. I did write that. I wrote it a couple of years ago, so uh, it may need an update, but still most

all the core information and that is still good. It's a very fine article, and it does point out some of the technical applications here too. Um that I just wanted to mention that drug therapies are beginning to be developed and have been developed to help flip those switches when it comes to disease, like the drug as a as a Pedidon and that helps suppress leukemia. So keep that in mind too. It's not all just who we we need to look at the ghosts in the machine there.

There are definite things that are coming out of this to help us along as we get a better understanding of epic genetics. And I'll close out here with a quote from Peter Brooks um play his adaptation of the Hindu epic the Mahabarata, where one character is speaking about the character Karna, who himself was an orphan who grew up to be a mighty warrior. And the quote is that birth is obscure and men are like rivers whose

origins are often unknown. So there you go, um, what's called the robot over here, and do just one quick listener mail before we leave, all right, This one comes to us from Dominique. Dom Anique writes in this as higher Julian Robert, just listen to your cool Science of podcast. Really great. I'm surprised you didn't reference the phoenix when speaking about the immortal jellyfish um and immortal in quotes there, because we discussed it's not really immortal, but for headline purposes,

it's immortal. It was the first thing that came to my mind that this is the aquatic equivalent of the legendary bird that would go up in flames at the end of its life to leave an egg in its place, which would from which it would then be reborn, which is a very good point. I don't know why I didn't think about the phoenix, because it's it's really more of an example of of the mythical phoenix as more so than it is an example of immortality. Domini continues.

Quantum teleportation also had me smiling as I first started to equate the entangled entangled pair of subparticles to those mythical twins who where one supposedly feels the pain of the other even across large distances. Of course, in this case, the twins would be killed off every time they cut, would be made on their arm to transmit a bit

of the info. I'm now imagining a sci fi story where shiploads of twins would be brought to the distant planet by supply ship been sacrificed by the thousands every time a message had to be sent. Wow. Yeah, it's really Hunger Games scenario. Yeah, and and and Dominique right to us from France by the way, So there you go. But yes, that the the twin example was a great one that I would have wish I would have thought

about UM. A few years back in New York, there was this guy who was offering it's kind of like an art installation kind of peace, uh, the idea of quantum marriage, where you would supposedly become quantum entangled to your partner UM. So that gets into a little bit

of that. Well, thanks Dominic for reading in. So if you would like to share anything with us UM's particularly if you'd like to share your thoughts on the genetic and epigenetics about the stories that we uh we we bring into our lives, that the stories that we end up creating and tweaking um to uh to really become who we are, then let us know about it. We

would love to hear your insight and or thoughts. You can find us on Facebook and Tumbler, where your stuff to blow your Mind on both of those, and you can also find us on Twitter, where our handle is blow the Mind, and you can always write us a letter at blew the Mind at Discovery dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, Is It How Stuff Works dot com