
Epigenetics Has Become Dangerously Fashionable - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/epigenetics-has-become-dangerously-fashionable
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grownseed
The hype around epigenetics, or anything-genetics in general, has been going
for a while [1], and it has some very annoying consequences. A lot of the
friends I talk to about the subject barely have an inkling of how even basic
genetics work, yet tell me about these "crazy things we can do now", except we
can't really, nor do we understand as much as a lot of people like to believe.
The media and their pop-science are obviously largely responsible for this,
but you'll find a lot of researchers using this to promote and fund their
research, and really, who can blame them (particularly in academia/research
where people will get any funding they can). I do blame some of the social
scientists however, who are often quick to draw correlations where there
aren't any, if only to get attention.

I work with some absolutely brilliant people, and a lot of them wouldn't touch
epigenetics with a ten foot pole. The hype around it means expectations are
ridiculous, we're barely scratching the surface of the subject yet many people
are already expecting things like authoritative dietary or educational advice.
The same is unfortunately true of cancer research and cancer care in general
("that's not how cancers work" is my new go-to phrase...).

In the post-genomics era [2], we're starting to see things like phenomics [3]
that could indeed further research into epigenetics, although this is still
very new and the real-world applications are still to bear significant
results. The most advanced use of phenomics at this point (that I'm aware of)
is to monitor and control plant features using mostly image recognition [4].
One particularly interesting application is to line up hundreds of plants
(often clones) and apply different conditions to different batches (including
radiation to induce random mutations), then have various types of cameras go
over the plants and perform feature recognition to try and infer correlations
between genotype, phenotype and environment (like these guys do [5]). It's
promising, but let's not forget these are plants, not animals, and certainly
not humans. It's also rather obvious that this sort of brute-force approach
(no matter how amazing I think it is) isn't exactly applicable to anything
other than plants at this point ; having rows of bred/cloned humans in
extremely controlled conditions could prove a bit tricky...

[1] [https://aeon.co/essays/the-dream-of-designing-humans-has-
a-l...](https://aeon.co/essays/the-dream-of-designing-humans-has-a-long-and-
peculiar-history) [2] I find the term a bit pompous, particularly considering
we're still very much reliant on genomics and still improving it quite
substantially [3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomics),
although it is a bit short on content [4]
[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369526615...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369526615000266)
[5] [http://www.psi.cz/products/plantscreen-
phenotyping/plantscre...](http://www.psi.cz/products/plantscreen-
phenotyping/plantscreen-high-throughput-phenotyping)

~~~
tumba
Can you make any recommendations on textbooks that would be useful for a non-
specialist who wants to survey how "basic genetics work" and understand the
current state of knowledge? I am not looking for popular treatments, but
something along the lines of Less Wrong's "Best Textbooks on Every Subject"
list. [1]

[1]
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/3gu/the_best_textbooks_on_every_subj...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/3gu/the_best_textbooks_on_every_subject/)

~~~
grownseed
I'm afraid I don't have any specific textbooks to recommend, I've learnt
mostly through osmosis (having no real bio background originally), and I've
also found the Coursera materials [1] to be really good and accessible.

A colleague of mine (who does have a strong bio background) also recommended
the Open Science Network [2], which is essentially a Maker Lab for bio. It's
based in Vancouver, but I'm sure other big cities have them too. I haven't
tried it myself but I'm definitely interested, they have a good reputation for
openness and collaboration, no matter your level and/or background.

[1]
[https://www.coursera.org/courses?languages=en&query=genetics](https://www.coursera.org/courses?languages=en&query=genetics)

[2] [http://www.opensciencenet.org/](http://www.opensciencenet.org/)

