and the rest? Yes, they are all talented masters of their craft. But there was something else about them, something more obvious, maybe so obvious that it was one of those things you just learn to take for granted.
Then it occurred to me: They are all breathtakingly gorgeous.
Like Halle Berry, we are all vessels—not necessarily designed to win Oscars—but made to eat, survive, and reproduce genetic material. So if you happen to win an Oscar, you could make history by extending one last note of gratitude to your extraordinary DNA. When your PR agent chastises you the next morning, just explain to her that we are all active participants in one of the oldest and most profound relationships on our planet—between our bodies and our DNA, and the food that connects both to the outside world. Halle Berry’s perfectly proportioned, fit, healthy body is evidence of a happy relationship between her genes and the natural environment, one that has remained so for several generations. As this chapter will explain, if you hope to create a more fruitful relationship with your own genes, to get healthier and improve the way you look, you need to learn to work with the intelligence embedded within your DNA.
DNA was useless; they just didn’t know what it was for. But in the last two decades, scientists have discovered that this material has some amazing abilities.
This line of discovery emerges from a branch of genetics called epigenetics. Epigenetic researchers investigate how genes get turned on or off. This is how the body modulates genes in response to the environment, and it is how two twins with identical DNA can develop different traits.
Epigenetic researchers exploring this expansive genetic territory are finding a hidden world of ornate complexity. Unlike genes, which function as a relatively static repository of encoded data, the so-called junk DNA (more properly called non-coding DNA) seems designed for change, both over the short term—within our lifetimes—and over periods of several generations, and longer. It appears that junk DNA assists biology in making key decisions, like turning one stem cell (an undifferentiated cell that can mature into any type of cell) into part of an eye, and another stem cell with identical DNA into, say, part of your liver. These decisions seem to be made based on environmental influences. We know this because when you take a stem cell and place it into an animal’s liver, it becomes a liver cell. If you took that same stem cell and placed it into an animal’s brain, it would become a nerve cell.20 Junk DNA does all this by using the chemical information floating around it to determine which genes should get turned on when, and in what quantity.
One of the most fascinating, and unexpected, lessons of the Human Genome Project is the discovery that our genes are very similar to mouse genes, which are very much like other mammalian genes, which in turn are surprisingly similar to those of fish. It appears that the proteins humans produce are not particularly unique in the animal kingdom.
What makes us uniquely human are the regulatory segments of our genetic material, the same regulatory segments that direct stem cell development during in-utero growth and throughout the rest of our lives. Could it be that the same mechanisms facilitating cell maturation also function over generations, enabling species to evolve? According to
Arturas Petronis, head of the Krembil Family Epigenetics Laboratory at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, “We really need some radical revision of key principles of the traditional genetic research program.”21 Another epigeneticist puts our misapprehension of evolution in perspective: mutation-and selection-driven evolutionary change is just the tip of the iceberg. “The bottom of the iceberg is epigenetics.”22
The more we study this mysterious 98 percent, the more we find it seems to function as a massively complicated regulatory system that serves to control our cellular activities as if it were a huge, molecular brain. A genetic lottery winner’s every cell carries DNA that regulates cell growth and activity better than your average Joe’s. Not because they’re just dumb-lucky, but because their regulatory DNA—their chromosomal “brain” located in the vast non-coding portions of their chromosomes—functions better. Just like your brain, DNA needs to be able to remember what it’s learned to function properly.
One example of what can happen when DNA “forgets” how to operate is cancer. Cancer develops in cells that have misunderstood their role as part of a cooperative enterprise and lost their ability to play nice in the body. The DNA running a cancer cell essentially becomes confused, believing its job is to instruct the cell it operates to divide and keep dividing without regard for neighboring cells until the growing mass of clones begins to kill its neighbors. This is an example of how epigenetics can work against us.
THE NUCLEUS: WHERE FOOD PROGRAMS GENES
A special chamber in every cell, called the nucleus, houses and protects all your DNA. Inside the nucleus, DNA is divided into chunks called chromosomes. Though each would measure several feet when uncoiled, all forty-six chromosomes are packed into just a few microns of space, spooled tightly around tiny structures called histones. These spooled threads of genetic information can loosen up to make a given section of DNA available for enzymes to bind to it, thus “turning on,” or enabling expression of, that particular gene or
set of genes. Nutrients from food, such as vitamins and minerals, as well as hormones and proteins your body makes play various roles in regulating this winding and unwinding, called “breathing.” The more we learn, the more we understand that our genes have a life of their own. The field of epigenetics is just beginning to scratch the surface of this dynamic gene regulation control system. One thing we do know is that chromosomal data is computed in analog terms rather than digital, enabling our DNA to store and compute far more information than previously imagined.
One of the positive functions of epigenetics is to come up with novel and creative solutions to less-t genes to make intelligent compromises.
Take the development of the eye, for example. Nested inside the retina at the back of the eye is the optic disc, which acts as the central focal point for light inputs that represent what eye doctors call central vision.
Something as simple as an inadequate supply of vitamin A during early childhood can force the genes to figure out how to build the disc as best it can under suboptimal nutritional circumstances. The result? Instead of a perfectly round disc you get an oval one, which can cause near-sightedness and astigmatism.23 Not a perfect outcome, of course, but without this ability to compromise, DNA would have to make more drastic decisions, like reabsorbing the malnourished optic disc cells entirely, leaving you blind.
The creativity of this problem-solving “intelligence” does not operate without reference. Each solution is guided by a record of every challenge your DNA, and your ancestors’ DNA, has ever faced. In other words, your DNA learns.