Senior Symposium Presentation: abstract

[bumblebeequeen]

I crapped this out in approximately 2 hours, including most of the research. I'll have to do a bunch more work to actually make a cohesive presentation. And it's not as technical as I'd like but my advisor told me to provide as much background information as possible, since not everyone in the audience would be familiar with epigenetics or

Comments

[uglyflowers]

so cool that you're presenting on this! i haven't studied the biochemistry of epigenetics, but i have read a few classic papers and think this stuff is super cool (and terrifying).

i don't know the context in which you need to present, but if you're going to bring in any of the social implications of this research, you might want to think about how a lot of researchers right now are looking for genes that predispose specific populations (and ethnic groups in particular) to diseases, like the gene that predisposes people of African descent to heart disease. a lot of this research assumes that the factors causing the disease patterns we see in human populations are genetic, that is, immutably written into our DNA. and this assumption basically allows us to collectively ignore the social and structural forces that cause unequal risks of adverse exposure... but clearly the findings that DNA methylation can last at least three (four? i forget) generations shows that even the expression of our genes is subject to the environments in which we (or our grandparents) grow up.

okay, i'm done. i'd love to talk more about this stuff with you when you have time :)