Epigenetics: Unfinished symphony

[摘要] The missing link between nature and nurture could lie in a phenomenon known as epigenetics, a cryptic chemical and physical code written over our genome's DNA sequence. The interaction of genes with their environment may explain why many identical twins have different susceptibility to diseases such as diabetes and cancer. Identical twins pairs were studied and it was found that epigenetic differences were hardly detectable in the youngest twins, but increased markedly with age.