Carey concludes with a discussion of the future directions for this research and its ability to improve human health and well-being.

Reaching beyond biology, epigenetics now informs work on drug addiction, the long-term effects of famine, and the physical and psychological consequences of childhood trauma. Nessa Carey, a leading epigenetics researcher, connects the field's arguments to such diverse phenomena as how ants and queen bees control their colonies, why tortoiseshell cats are always female, why some plants need cold weather before they can flower, and how our bodies age and develop disease. Each neuron makes links with ten thousand other neurons to form an incredible three dimensional grid. Surveying the 20-year history of the field while also highlighting its latest findings and innovations, this volume provides a readily understandable introduction to the foundations of epigenetics. The Epigenetics Revolution by Nessa Carey 4,545 ratings, 4.06 average rating, 420 reviews Open Preview The Epigenetics Revolution Quotes Showing 1-30 of 73 Our brains contain one hundred billion nerve cells (neurons). This is reflected also in the mounting discourse on the societal implications of epigenetics, in which vast expectations coexist with significant uncertainty about what aspects of this science are.

Epigenetics refers to codes, processes and functions above genetics, that control and regulate the genetic code: a code above the code, as it were. It explains why mapping an organism's genetic code is not enough to determine how it develops or acts and shows how nurture combines with nature to engineer biological diversity. The fundamentals of this revolution remain however to be scrutinized, and indeed the very contours of what counts as 'epigenetic' are often blurred. If genetics was the 20th century’s major scientific revolution, epigenetics appears to be the big revolution for the 21st. Epigenetics can potentially revolutionize our understanding of the structure and behavior of biological life on Earth.

The epigenetics revolution