Weissmann - Epigenetics in the age of Twitter : pop culture and modern science

Epigenetics

IN THE

Age of Twitter

Pop Culture and Modern Science

First Published in the United States in 2012 by
Bellevue Literary Press, New York

FOR INFORMATION ADDRESS:

Bellevue Literary Press

NYU School of Medicine

350 First Avenue

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New York, NY 10016

Copyright 2012 by Gerald Weissmann.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

Bellevue Literary Press would like to thank all its generous donors, individuals and foundations, for their support.

Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress.

Book design and composition by Mulberry Tree Press, Inc.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

FIRST EDITION

1 3 5 7 9 8 4 2

ISBN 978-1-934137-51-2

Ann: rien sans elle, toujours

)

E. M. Forster, The Machine Stops, 1909

Its as if Zuckerberg read E. M. Forsters famous rallying cry in Howards End, Only connect, and took it literally.... (Theres no chance that this actually happened. I asked Zuckerberg if hed read Forster and got the spider stare. Hed never heard of him.)()

R. Stengel, Times Man of the Year, 2010

THE ESSAYS IN THIS BOOK deal with modern science and the popular arts. There are, of course, real differences between art and science: in science if another lab replicates your work, you call to congratulate them; in the arts your lawyer calls. Another difference is that no real work of science has ever made anyone laugh out loud.

Arts and Sciences at one point did mean Paintings and Stuff and Petri dishes and Stuff, to quote Zadie Smith.() had it right: every reader has become a writeror tweeterin the age of electronic reproduction.

These essays play off one or another discovery of todays biological science (with epigenetics leading the pack) against one or another aspect of popular culture: film, television, sports, etc. (with Twitter et al. leading the pack.) Well see what the molecular biology of aging has to do with Sarah Palins hair, why a Nobel Prize for reproductive biology clashed with J-Los notion of fertility and why the name on Oklahoma States football stadium (T. Boone Pickens) scuppered basic research on anthrax.

Twitter first. To learn what Twitter could do for me, I signed up a couple of years ago under the nom de silico Franz Anton Mesmer (17341815) or . Sure enough, I soon had half a dozen followers. I told this to a psychiatrist friend of mine, who was astonished that anyone would follow the words of a dead hypnotist. I pointed out that this was the basis of organized religion, not to speak of Freudian analysis.

While Twitter is the latest effort of popular culture to see how little one can say to the largest audience, epigenetics is the latest twist on the )

Darwinian evolutionthe origin of speciestakes place over eons: epigenetics prints short-term bar codes on our cells so that they remember where theyve been and where they should be going. If they get lost, we call it cancer, obesity or diabetes. Since epigenetic changes can be induced by diet, drugs and the environment, theres a whiff of Lamarck about the whole notion.() Not to worry, though: until the genome crumbles, our skin will remain skin, our bones remain bones and apes wont turn into humans tomorrow. One trend is sure, though: nurture is gaining on nature in the old debate.

Epigenetic explanations have been extended to reach Woody Allens second favorite organ, the brain. If the gonads (Allens favorite) are the organs of classical evolution, the brain is the organ of personal and cultural evolution. Neurobiologists now believe that our brains evolve through a series of choices made by individual neurons over time. These choices are made under epigenetic control and, as in classical evolution, are forged by selective pressure with adaptive advantage.() Growth, learning and remembering take place in the real social network: imagine the very different selective pressures acting on the neural networks of young women growing up in Kabul or Minneapolis.

My essays touch on the social network we call Western civilization: Antoine and Marie-Anne Lavoisier, Emerson and Margaret Fuller, Gustav and Alma Mahler; Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells. Experimental science, Im convinced, is a crowning achievement of that civilization, and the fact that women now function as equal partners in science is a welcome sign of its continuing vitality. Several of the chapters in this book deal with the many women of sciencefrom the martyred Hypatia of Alexandria, the first woman scientist, to the Nobel laureates Marie Curie, Christiane Nsslein-Volhard, Elizabeth Blackburn and Carol Greider. The list speaks for itself.

Which brings me back to that business of laughing out loud. The first urbane female investigator of record was Dashiell Hammetts character, Nora Charles. Her crack in the 1939 movie Another Thin Man rang a bell for womens liberation in the modern era:

A Bacardi, says Nick, her husband and co-investigator, to the waiter in a Latin nightclub. He looks to Nora, who nods. Nick motions to the waiter and adds, Two Bacardis. Says Nora with a straight face to the waiter, whod ignored her, Ill have the same. The waiter returns with four Bacardis.()

Cheers!

Maureen Dowd, To Tweet or Not to Tweet, 2009()

For centuries a small number of writers were confronted by many thousands of readers. This changed toward the end of the last century. It began with the daily press opening to its readers space for letters to the editor. And today... at any moment the reader is ready to turn into a writer.

Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction, 1931()

All registered users are able to add Notes, Comments, and Ratings to any article.... Highlight the text to be annotated, and then click the Add a note to the text link in the right-hand navigation menu of the article.... Notes can be started at any point within the text, but for ease of reading we ask that you do not begin Notes in the middle of words.

Public Library of Science, 2009()

AFTER WIKIPEDIA AND WIKILEAKS, are we now into Wikiscience? Its reassuring to read that our colleagues at the Public Library of Science have remained true to the integrity of the word, if not the sentence or thought. PLoS One has raised its banner for verbal integrity in a cheery commercial titled PLoS Journals Sandbox: A Place to Learn and Play.() The new format, which permits instant interruption of online, formal scientific papers, is certainly in keeping with the temper of our time. Were this to have been the practice in old-fashioned print libraries, many of our journals would by now resemble Kitty Litter. And now theres Twitter.