Two identical twin sisters, raised in the same house in northern Germany, ended up in their late fifties with two completely different bodies. Same DNA, two different lives, two different biologies. This is the door into Season 2, and into one of the most important scientific findings of the last twenty years: your genes are not the script of your life. There is a layer above the genes, called the epigenome, that decides what each gene actually does. And that layer is being shaped, every day, by what you eat, how you sleep, how you move, how you feel, and who you spend your days with.

In this opening episode, we look at the strange and humbling story of the Human Genome Project, how researchers expected to find a hundred thousand human genes and instead found about twenty thousand, roughly the same as a roundworm. We look at what was hiding in the ninety-eight percent of DNA once dismissed as junk. And we introduce the piano metaphor that will hold together the rest of the season.

If you have ever wondered why one person stays well and another falls apart on the same diet, in the same family, with the same medical care, this is the episode that answers the question.

Sources

National Human Genome Research Institute - Human Genome Project Fact Sheet https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/educational-resources/fact-sheets/human-genome-project

National Institutes of Health - National Human Genome Research Institute Almanac https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/nih-almanac/national-human-genome-research-institute-nhgri

Feinberg, A. P. - The Key Role of Epigenetics in Human Disease Prevention and Mitigation https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3752894/

Alegría-Torres, J. A., Baccarelli, A., & Bollati, V. - Epigenetics and Lifestyle https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3752894/

Bruce H. Lipton - The Biology of Belief https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781683649076/thebiologyofbelief/

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