Hands down the most confusing topic that keeps popping up in biohacking circles is epigenomics. The concept that lifestyle choices such as what we eat, when we sleep, how we exercise and even how old we are can cause our cells to override our DNA is confusing. Fortunately, the good folks over at the National Institute of Health have been working on The Roadmap Epigenomics Project and using data from the ENCODE Project to understand more about how the human genome functions and what causes different genes to be activated or disabled.

The easiest way to start to get our head around what the epigenome is doing to is through analogy. This video from Illumina (the company that builds DNA sequencers) uses a music analogy. “Just like orchestras can perform one piece of music in many different ways. A cell’s combined set of changes in gene expression is called its epigenome.”

 

Two fascinating examples of the kind of useful information that have surfaced due to The Roadmap Epigenomics Project is a new way to detect Crohn’s disease and multiple sclerosis. These are both autoimmune diseases which now we can identify the immune cell types that go crazy when it comes to these diverse disorders.