Word: waterland
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...importance of DNA methylation in altering the physical characteristics of an organism was proposed in the 1970s, yet it wasn't until 2003 that anyone experimented with DNA methylation quite as dramatically as Duke University oncologist Randy Jirtle and one of his postdoctoral students, Robert Waterland, did. That year, they conducted an elegant experiment on mice with a uniquely regulated agouti gene - a gene that gives mice yellow coats and a propensity for obesity and diabetes when expressed continuously. Jirtle's team fed one group of pregnant agouti mice a diet rich in B vitamins (folic acid and vitamin...
...vitamins acted as methyl donors: they caused methyl groups to attach more frequently to the agouti gene in utero, thereby altering its expression. And so without altering the genomic structure of mouse DNA - simply by furnishing B vitamins - Jirtle and Waterland got agouti mothers to produce healthy brown pups that were of normal weight and not prone to diabetes...