It seems like arrant science fiction . NASA astronaut Scott Kelly goes to infinite for most a year , comes back , and suddenly has turned into a variation with different DNA from his Twin Falls . AsNewsweek wrote , his DNA “ changed in space . ”
Except that ’s not what happened .
The saga begin last week with the Newsweek story , traverse a January NASA insistency release with thefollowing paragraph :
Another interesting determination concerned what some call the “ space factor ” , which was alluded to in 2017 . researcher now know that 93 % of Scott ’s genes return to normal after bring down . However , the persist 7 % point to possible longer terminus changes in genes related to his immune system , DNA repair , bone formation networks , hypoxia , and hypercapnia .
Kelly himself twirp the tale with the joke , “ I just learned about it in this article . This could be unspoilt news show ! I no longer have to call @ShuttleCDRKelly my selfsame twin brother anymore , ” referring to his matching , astronaut Mark Kelly . CNNpicked up this story , and now news sales outlet across the country have since claimed that 7 percent of Kelly ’s DNA changed in space .
Except if 7 percentage of Scott Kelly ’s DNA actually change , he would be a completely dissimilar species . homo and chimps , for exemplar , partake 96 per centum of thesame DNA , a 4 percent difference .
What really encounter is that 7 percent of the means Kelly ’s DNA is expressed change after distance travel , as Daniela Bezdan , inquiry conductor of the Mason Laboratory of Integrative Genomics at Weill Cornell Medicine , explained in a tweetand confirm in an email to Gizmodo . This is further reassert in an flesh out instruction from Chris Mason , who drop a line that , while there were some mutations in both twins ’ deoxyribonucleic acid after spaceflight , “ although 93 % of factor ’ locution , return to normal postflight , a subset of several hundred ‘ infinite genes ’ were still disrupted after return to Earth , ” emphasis mine .
This kind of change is what ’s hump as epigenetic , and it is something very dissimilar .
Space might bear upon methylation , for exemplar — the act by which interpersonal chemistry flips DNA sequences on and off , making them decipherable or unreadable by the balance of the cell . It ’s as if DNA were an encyclopedia , with some sentences covered with dim mag tape , piss them unreadable . The trip to space could have switched some of the tape recording around — but the words are precisely the same .
None of the principal investigators of the NASA Twin Falls study would remark on this story ’s science , noting that they plan to meet later today so as to decide on the best scheme to rig the phonograph recording heterosexual . Bezdan tell Gizmodo that she believed Mason would be on CNN tonight to discourse the preliminary results . The related to newspaper will be issue later this year .
Two of the researchers associated with the task told Gizmodo that they were not dependent to talk on the subject , but were disappointed in the rearing misinformation . Mathias Basner , University of Pennsylvania professor of sleep and chronobiology , say Gizmodo that some of the newsworthiness stories are categoric out faulty . Emmanuel Mignot , Stanford professor of sleep medication , told Gizmodo the reportage was “ very sad . ”
So , no . Scott Kelly ’s desoxyribonucleic acid is almost entirely same . But the way it ’s expressed may be different .
Update 4:50 p.m. : NASA sent us this statement :
Mark and Scott Kelly are still selfsame Twin ; Scott ’s DNA did not fundamentally exchange . What investigator did observe are changes in factor expression , which is how your physical structure react to your environs . This probably is within the range for mankind under tenseness , such as plenty climb or SCUBA diving .
The modification related to only 7 percent of the gene expression that changed during space travel that had not return to preflight after six months on Earth . This change of factor reflection is very minimum . We are at the beginning of our agreement of how blank flight affects the molecular tier of the human body . NASA and the other researchers collaborating on these subject field have a bun in the oven to announce more comprehensive result on the twin studies this summer .
Kristen V. Brown attend with this story ’s reporting .
GeneticsNASAScienceScott Kelly
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