Duke Professor Randy Jirtle provides a very clear, accessible and understandable discussion of epigenetics, a burgeoning new field which looks at environmental effects on the expression of genes; to use his analogy–the software or programs which regulate the hardware of life. He suggests that perhaps the majority of diseases are related to epigenetics, he opens up vast new fields of research, provides a fascinating look at applications to evolutionary theory and ends the discussion with a great “ponderable”. It may be the case that you are what you AND what your parents and grandparents eat/ate, since these “software” mutations may be passed on to offspring. This is a grand talk — well worth the time [~55 minutes]
