Epigenetics: A Graphic Guide by Cath Ennis and Oliver Pugh, Book 44 of 2022

 I first read about epigenetics in Nature magazine almost 20 years ago. The feature article summarized the current state at the time of research into what happens around genes and how it affects our lives--and future generations.  

This fall I have been reading Life's Edge by Carl Zimmer. The two books work well together.  Zimmer shows the reader how difficult it is to draw a line between living and not-living.  

In Epigenetics: A Graphic Guide Cath Ennis and Oliver Pugh demonstrate that the dividing line between the influence of our genes and our environment is as blurry as defining life.  A human genome lives at the center of all our cells. If it were stretched straight it would be a meter long. So those millions of genes that make up our genome are folded thousands and thousands of times. 

All of this folding and the mechanisms protiens use to copy genetic instructions from folded genes mean that the shape of the genome and the cell it is in influence our lives.  Folded genes can be activated and inactivated by attaching and detaching small methyl molecules. This methylation process is part of life, but can go wrong.  Epigenetics studies who these processes outside the genome influence our lives.  

I was left with more questions than answers, but glad to know a little bit more about how deeply complex life is.  

First 43 Books of 2022:

Life's Edge by Carl Zimmer

The Genius of Judaism by Bernard-Henri Levy

C.S.Lewis: A Very Short Introduction by James Como

English Literature in the Sixteenth Century excluding drama by C.S. Lewis

Le veritable histoire des petits cochons by Erik Belgard

The Iliad or the Poem of Force by Simone Weil

Game of Thrones, Book 5 by George R.R. Martin

Irony and Sarcasm by Roger Kreutz

Essential Elements by Matt Tweed

Les horloges marines de M. Berthoud 

The Red Wheelbarrow and Other Poems by William Carlos Williams

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

Cochrane by David Cordingly 

QED by Richard Feynman

Spirits in Bondage by C.S. Lewis

Reflections on the Psalms by  C.S. Lewis

The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler by David I. Kertzer

The Last Interview and Other Conversations by Hannah Arendt

Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut

The Echo of Greece by Edith Hamilton

If This Isn't Nice, What Is? by Kurt Vonnegut

The War That Made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium by Barry S. Strauss. 

Civil Rights Baby by Nita Wiggins

Lecture's on Kant's Political Philosophy by Hannah Arendt

Le grec ancien facile par Marie-Dominique Poree

The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen

Perelandra by C.S. Lewis

The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay

First Principles by Thomas Ricks

Political Tribes by Amy Chua 

Book of Mercy by Leonard Cohen

A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters by Andrew Knoll

Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

Understanding Beliefs by Nils Nilsson

1776 by David McCullough

The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt

Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson

How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss

Unflattening by Nick Sousanis

Marie Curie  by Agnieszka Biskup (en francais)

The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche

Fritz Haber, Volume 1 by David Vandermeulen