Please no bully for this probably stupid question but I really want to learn.
So i'm sure all of you guys heard about that astronaut who was in space a long time and came back and his DNA changed 7%. That doesn't seem like a lot but then I remember we share 96% or so DNA with Apes. So if only a 4% difference in DNA is that much of a difference between us and them I can only imagine how much a 7% difference could potentially be. Is this bad? Should we be worried that if we go into space for too long our DNA changes that much?
Posted this yesterday, checking back in today, and nothing. Thanks Veeky Forums.
Gavin Powell
Most likely it was junk DNA otherwise he would have died of cancer long ago
Brayden Scott
Most likely it just means his kids would be downies
Henry Gray
>Athlete Scott Kelly remained overweight while supposedly in micro-gravity on a diet of dried space food.
Burgers are just naturally fat.
Sebastian Gonzalez
>shaved >got fat Hm yes.
Connor Mitchell
Gene expression changed, not the actual content of his genes
Michael Russell
DNA is your base pairs, and a shitload of base pairs make up a chromosome
areas within chromosomes can be in closed or open conformations
open conformation -> express the genes in that area. closed -> don't
He experienced a change between open and closed. None of his base pairs changed. The difference between apes and humans is base pairs.
Jacob Taylor
LAMARCK DID NOTHING WRONG
Lucas Taylor
nobody read this guys post
Sebastian Miller
why not?
Adam Allen
The guy's wife, Gabby Giffords, got shot in the head by some young man on hwy 77 about 2 miles from Helene's house. I wonder if the shooter was Helene's patient in the Tucson pediatric psychiatric hospitals.
They mean totally different things when they say 4% difference and 7% difference. You'd have to look at how they're measured.
Landon White
is there a conspiracy or something going on? What are you guys talking about?
Colton Nelson
some dormant genes activated, nothing actually changed
it's like having a 1000 light switches inside your body and you flipped 1 or 2 on or off
David Morgan
That's pretty interesting, so you're saying that humans already have genes that begin to express specifically and only during/after space travel?
Camden Richardson
>so you're saying fuck off cathy
William Parker
If you look at the sentence's structure, it's a question, and not rhetorical.
Jeremiah Reyes
The 7% "genes that changed" are actually epigenetic changes, the media is reporting this wrong.
Nicholas Torres
Yes, which is a little strange because humans haven't really been in space, so epiginetic survival responses to it are weird.
Matthew Reyes
I had this very same question but the news worded it wrong. 7% of the DNA that changed while he was in space didn't change back. They never say what % of his DNA changed in the first place.
The rest of the article states it correctly though, that the distribution of nutrients has to be rearranged since gravity isn't pulling them downwards. Those are probably the parts of his DNA that didn't change back.
Think about it, your upper body produces more vital stuff than your lower body because gravity pulls it down into your legs. Being in space, you have to even it all out.
Then I'm sure once he's on earth, his legs are like "Man I dig producing my own nutrients, maybe I should keep on doing it"
Kevin Nguyen
>humans haven't really been in space Then why go through the effort to show crew members in the ISS performing experiments?
But, basically gene expression is reliant on concentrations of signaling molecules. Like, an example might be a hormone passing through your blood, diffusing into a cell, attaching to a nuclear hormone receptor, entering the nucleus and changing what genes are expressed. If that nuclear hormone receptor isn't present, or if it gets sequestered somewhere, or is otherwise fucked around with due to other chemical and physical forces, you wouldn't expect the same result as when those forces aren't present.
Although most biology can operate under a lot of assumptions like constant pressures, temperatures, things like that, it seems like space is different enough that you can't assume the same molecular behavior and cellular function. I wouldn't expect us to behave the same in space, though, since we evolved to function on this planet.
His genes didn't change. Only which ones were expressed. Likely to adjust to gravitational differences affecting blood flow and metabolic distribution. It's just the body doing its job and adapting to a new environment.
There are examples of long lost identical twins looking markedly different from each other because they lived separately in different climates and geographical areas for many years.
Austin Lee
Identical twins my ass nose it totally different brow ridge skull formation ears fraternal twins - ok
Luis Adams
does anyone believe they checked the fuckers sequence correctly and noted the turn ons and offs, and determined 7% because I certainly don't believe it
They probably checked .0014 percent, then extrapolated and calculated the rest - they took a fucking faulty poll, then declared their bullshit.
Chase Lee
so where's the pic where they look exactly the same before all this space travel >OH YEAH THAT'S RIGHT IT DOESN'T EXIST
Gavin Rodriguez
GOOD GAWD THEY ALWAYS FUCK IT UP COMPLETELY DON'T THEY: " Although 93% of Kelly's genetic expression returned to normal once he returned to Earth, a subset of several hundred "space genes" remained disrupted. Some of these alterations, found only after spaceflight, are thought to be caused by the stresses of space travel. "
No, 93% didn't "return" to normal, otherwise the claim is it was 100% off whack...
god dammit, they always fuck it up, so you never learn the real truth, you learn lies god damn braindead shithead should be fired
Easton Adams
I thought evolution takes a long ass time. Why did his DNA change so drastically in such a short amount of time? Do humans really adapt that quickly? If yes then I have a lot of hope for colonizing mars. We could adapt to that climate and gravity rather quickly.
Grayson Torres
Literally what is puberty, genetic expression changes happen to almost every goddamn person on the planet.
Caleb Stewart
You're a moron, go back to your containment board alt rat
Colton Lewis
well he has a point. They're not identical.
Parker Murphy
that man was MKULTRA'd
Wyatt Cox
Not really, epigenetic changes happen pretty much whenever something causes a gene to be promoted more or made inaccessible through histone packing.
Brayden Thompson
his soul is no longer weighed down by earth's gravity
