As a teenager whose primary focus is a field called epigenetics, you would think my most frequently asked question would be something sciencey, like, “What have you found out about polyphenols and their ability to demethylate oncogenes in cancerous cells?”. Well, it’s not, and is probably the first thing you were wondering when you read my introduction, “Grace, what the heck is epigenetics?”.

I’m glad you asked! Regardless if you start by knowing anything about the field, by the end of this article you will understand

• The root of the name epigenetics

• The difference between genotypes and phenotypes

• How our environment can switch genes on and off

So before we jump into the daunting concept itself, let’s define the word. The Latin root “epi” means “above” or “over.” On the other hand, the word “genetics” refers to the passing down of traits from one generation to another. Together, we get the meaning “above genetics”. While it might be confusing to grasp at first, next I’m going to cover exactly what I mean by “above genetics”.

Now, we are going to walk through these next scientific terms slowly and gently, just like removing a bandaid. Epigenetics is the connection between your genotype and your phenotype. Your genotype is your genetic makeup, which just means your DNA and your genes. While your phenotype is your observable traits, spanning from your behavior to certain proteins in your cells. Your genotype strongly determines your phenotype by coding for what makes you you! 

Unfortunately, this has led to the common misconception that your DNA solely determines everything about you. Which would basically mean that your DNA, which cannot be changed, has led to the causation of everything that you are in life. This is simply not true, unless we are talking about CRISPR, but that’s for another time. So, the explanation for all of your traits would go a little something like “you get what you get and you don’t throw a fit”. This would mean that if you’re sick, your DNA was mutated and caused that sickness. That leaves our best explanation for cancer as simply an unfortunate random occurrence in our cells. What’s that? You were diagnosed with Alzheimers? Unlucky roll of the dice. Thankfully, DNA isn’t the only thing that dictates our genes. Your environment plays a bigger role than you might think.

Epigenetics is the effect of environmental factors on our genes. These factors include diet, exercise, mindset, and air quality. As I mentioned before, you can’t change your actual genetic code (genome would be the scientific term for this), so how does something like sugar affect your genes? In short, it doesn’t change the script, it simply annotates it. Epigenetics affects whether certain genes are turned on or off (just like turning on and off a light switch). When a gene is off, it is methylated, and when it is on, it isn’t methylated. So whenever you hear the word DNA methylation being thrown around, just know it’s referring to whether or not a gene is on. Histone acetylation, another epigenetic factor, also simply refers to the turning on and off of genes. These alterations are often the result of complex signalling pathways in the cell, which are triggered by an environmental stimulus.

Surprisingly, the majority of well-known inflammatory diseases are majorly influenced by cells turning off a good gene, or turning on a bad one. For example, cancerous cells are often created through the activation of a set of genes called oncogenes. These genes basically cause the cell to rapidly divide without properly finishing the steps of cell division. Now that you understand the basic science behind epigenetics, let’s talk about its importance.

While DNA is permanent, epigenetics are reversible. This means that diseases like cancer could be reversed through a diet that induces positive epigenetic changes.

Now let me tell you the most important and yet hardest thing for people to believe about epigenetics. It all starts with you. Every type of food you eat, how often you smoke, if you’re stressed, whether you did that 10 minute HIIT workout on YouTube, all affects your epigenetics. Your epigenetics are reacting to your environment and lifestyle choices every single second of the day.

This is the greatest news ever, because it means we have more control of our life than you may have believed. Our life span, happiness, and health are all impacted by our epigenetics. No longer is our risk of developing life-threatening diseases entirely up to chance, but largely up to us.