Epigenetics, also known as gene expression, is the process of uncoiling and recoiling genes.

For a better understanding, when you stretch a genome, it’s comes to be about 2 meters long, so if we need to fit it into ourselves, so we need to pack it very tightly. Our body does it with the help of proteins. Proteins help to make sure they are organized and accessible during the process of condensing all that cold. When our DNA coils around the protein it creates a threadlike structure. When a cell needs to step into any part of DNA / gene, it coils that particular section for reading. This is the process known as gene expression or epigenetics.

How your parent’s epigenetics can affect your epigenetics?

You can pass the epigenetics from one generation to another. Epigenetics keeps changing continuously from as early as the fetal stages. And it continues to change our entire lives and even in future generations.

What are the conditions that epigenetics can cause?

Numerous conditions can be a result of epigenetics such as Preder – Willi and Angelman syndrome.

Prader – Willi Syndrome – in this condition the affected person can face weak muscle tone, feeding difficulties, poor growth delay in development, and other symptoms. People with this syndrome experience an insatiable appetite from early childhood which often leads to obesity or overweight.

There are few causes of this disease and epigenetics is one of them. This occurs when one of your dreams abruptly turns off. Although this does not change the genome, it does change gene expression.

Angelman syndrome – the cause of this condition is of opposite situation to the previous one. In this, a person acquires both chromosomes from the father, where one should have been of the mother. This condition directly affects the nervous system, which causes symptoms like delay in development difficulty in movement and balancing, and intellectual disability.

Is there any test for the epigenetic condition?

Yes, many clear clinical genetic tests can check for the turned-on or turned-off genes. You can learn more about this type of testing with the help of an expert.  You can also try a direct-to-consumer epigenetic test.