Excerpt
CHAPTER THREE
MY EUREKA MOMENT
They said, ‘You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are.’
The man replied, ‘Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar.
—Wallace Stevens
How Mouldable or Changeable are Human Beings?
Not too long ago, we still believed that the genes passed on to us from our parents were exact copies of their genes and that these genes functioned unchanged throughout our lives—our parents proudly paraded their little replicas. However, after the mapping of the human genome, scientists have made some significant discoveries and a very different picture has been emerging.
An article I read in Newsweek’s Bulletin magazine helped the first piece of the puzzle fall into place for me. In her article, A Changing Portrait of DNA, Mary Carmichael (2007) told of the discovery made by a university biologist, Prof Randy Jirtle.
Prof Jirtle carried out an experiment on two groups of mice that gave birth to identical pups, i.e. babies carrying the same genes. Although the pups were then raised in the same way, they looked completely different from each other. The first group of mice pups were the colour of rancid butter, overweight, and prone to cancer and diabetes. The second group of mice pups, in contrast, were beautiful: lean, healthy, and brown. ‘Same nature, same nurture, radically different outcomes’ (Carmichael 2007). The differences between the two groups of pups were explained by the mothers’ diets. Mary Carmichael (2007) goes on to say:
Almost immediately after conception, while the embryo is still made of just a few cells, it begins to pick up on subtle cues in its environment. It then canvasses its own genome, switching genes in different cells on or off according to the signals it receives.
What is happening here is that, while you inherit your genome from your parents and it remains unchanged throughout your life, shortly after conception your cells start to map, what scientists now call, your epigenome. Prof Jirtle describes the difference between the genome and epigenome as ‘the difference between the hardware and software of a computer. The hardware determines the basic properties of the computer, but the software largely determines how the computer’s capabilities are used; which features you activate and which you do not’ (Jirtle cited in Chameides, The Greengrok blog, posted June 11, 2008).
In a broadcast interview with Nova (Ghost in your genes: Epigenetic Therapy 2007), Dr. Jean-Pierre Issa, from the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, explains this process as follows:
Skin, eyes, teeth, hair and organs all have exactly the same DNA. You cannot genetically tell my skin from my eyes or my teeth. Yet these are very different cells. They behave differently. And that behavior remains the same for as long as I live. That difference, not being genetic has been termed epigenetic. At any one point a tissue might utilize only 10 percent or sometimes 20% of its gene complement. The genes that a tissue does not need, or should not express, are specifically turned off by epigenetic mechanisms, while the other genes that the tissues needs to continue to express are protected from this silencing.
It sounds very complicated, but think of it like this: a cell in your eye still contains the gene that can make a kidney cell; however, the kidney cell gene has been switched off and only the genes required for making eye cells have been switched on in this cell. In other words, a cell in your eye and a cell in your kidney is genetically the same but epigenetically different.
The process of mapping our individual epigenomes is very sensitive to our different environments, especially during our early development, and while it still ‘plays a role in the maintenance of our tissues, it is difficult to modify once we are adults’ (Ghost in your genes: Epigenetic Therapy 2007).
In Prof Jirtle’s experiment the mice pups all had the same genome, but the differences between their mothers’ diets during their pregnancies influenced the mapping of the pups’ individual epigenomes to express good health in one group and a range of illnesses in the other.
Copper and Human Intelligence
I researched the topic further and stumbled across another important experiment related to this issue….
…..To fully grasp the significance of this discovery, one needs to first understand the importance of copper for human intelligence. In 2006, research was done to find out how copper interacts with an embryo’s genetics during early development (Washington University School of Medicine August 2006). This research showed that ‘in humans copper is found in all body tissues and is critical for maintaining stable iron levels, connective tissue formation and nerve cell function in the brain, hormone production and pigmentation’.
Another article on research in this area was released in 2006 (Washington University School of Medicine September 2006), and asked the question: ‘Copper circuits help brain function—could tweaking the circuits make us smarter?’ The research finding suggested that ‘copper and its transporter, a protein called ATP7a, are vital to human thinking’. Prof Jonathan Gitlin asked:
Why don’t we think a hundred times better than we do? One answer to that question is, perhaps we could – if the brain could make the right connections. We’ve found that copper modulates very critical events within the nervous system that influence how well we think. (Washington University School of Medicine 2006)
Research published in 2007 (US Department of Agriculture 2007) indicated that pups born to rats that were fed a low copper diet during pregnancy and lactation showed slowed development, compared to pups whose mothers received sufficient copper in their diets. The pups in the low copper diet group ‘exhibited slowed development of the dentate gyrus and hippocampal areas of the brains. These areas are important for higher brain functions, such as learning’.
Before you now rush off to consume as much copper as possible, it’s also important to realize that too much copper in the body can be fatal. Copper is essential for life, but we still do not know much about the metabolism of copper generally, much less during pregnancy. ‘Not many people know that without copper the human body cannot survive. Copper is particularly necessary for brain and skin development. And while it’s essential for life, too much can be deadly,’ says Dr Ackland (Physorg.com 2007).
Wonderful! We now know that copper makes us smart; too bad that it can also kill us—but that’s where … study comes in….
