Among the many mysteries of human biology is why complex diseases like diabetes, high blood pressure and psychiatric disorders are so difficult to predict and, often, to treat. An equally perplexing puzzle is why one individual gets a disease like cancer or depression, while an identical twin remains perfectly healthy.
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Now scientists have discovered a vital clue to unraveling these riddles. The human genome is packed with at least four million gene switches that reside in bits of DNA that once were dismissed as “junk” but that turn out to play critical roles in controlling how cells, organs and other tissues behave. The discovery, considered a major medical and scientific breakthrough, has enormous implications for human health because many complex diseases appear to be caused by tiny changes in hundreds of gene switches.
I remember reading about "junk" DNA years ago, back when I was reading Scientific American on a regular basis. Nobody knew what it did, and most people figured it was just leftovers -- stuff that was still hanging around after it had lost its original use. We should have known better -- evolution is notorious for finding new uses for things. (We can no longer use our big toes for grasping branches -- well, most of us can't -- but it's much harder to keep our balance without them.)
This also goes a long way, I think, toward explaining things like sexual orientation and all the other phenomena in human behavior that partake of that "stair-step" pattern: There are probably thousands, if not millions, of gene switches that influence how things like sexual orientation are established and how they manifest. Eventually someone will get around to researching the behavioral influences here, but i'm betting that's at least part of what they find.
(As a footnote to that, check out this article from The Age on how oxytocin is related to behavior.)
My mood is much better now -- I was really getting sick of the convention coverage.
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