Did you know that there are inherited biological codes that are NOT stored in DNA and that are NOT epigenetic modification on DNA?
[I suspect that the effect of microgravity on cell and organ morphology may reveal some interesting insights into these codes. Numerous studies have shown that microgravity affects plant morphology and animal cell morphology, though they are not discussed in this preprint.]
I’m excited to announce that we (+ @danielegos) have updated my paper describing Heritable Nongenetic Information (HNI, pronounced “honey”), a concept that describes various types of codes in biology that are inherited but are not stored in DNA.
We refined the definition of HNI and included a figure and table showing the difference between HNI and previous concepts, such as: Nongenetic Information (NGI) which includes transmitted molecules and taught behaviors; and Inherited Gene Regulation (IGR), which refers to epigenetic modifications.
We also added a section explaining the benefits of cracking 2D and 3D codes for biomedical discoveries.
Most of the paper provides evidence for the “Tissue Spatial Code” that affects wound healing, limb regeneration, and cancer development apart from the instructions in DNA. We also provide evidence of HNI that affects protein structure.
@dave
Impressive work! I reviewed your perspectives, and I’m curious—why not design a study to explore whether microgravity has an effect on HNI?"
There is a hypothesis that " Microgravity alters Tissue Spatial Codes (TSCs) by disrupting bioelectric fields, ECM organization, nuclear architecture, and chromosome docking sites, leading to unexpected or reversible changes in cellular and organ morphology."
If HNI is a fundamental biological mechanism, cells and tissues should either compensate for or fail to recover from the loss of gravitational cues.
I might have some suggestions to design such a study!
Hi Amin, you are right on. Perhaps you can write up a hypothesis paper that outlines experiments. This can become a future grant proposal. My email is dave@tsg-lab.org. Best, Dave
Hi @Aminkhazeei and @lauren.sanders , If you know the authors of this paper, it might be interesting to analyze he shape of bone caverns. I hypothesize that osteoporosis due to microgravity is morphologically distinct from osteoporosis on earth, which has implications about (1) where bones are likely to break in space vs on earth, and (2) how best to reinforce bones in microgravity vs on earth.
37-Day microgravity exposure in 16-Week female C57BL/6J mice is associated with bone loss specific to weight-bearing skeletal sites
Very interesting hypothesis! You may already know that this paper has data in OSDR: NASA OSDR: Open Science for Life in Space So you could potentially perform some analysis to accompany your hypothesis.
Hi @lauren.sanders , Thanks for letting me know. I don’t have the bandwidth to explore NASA OSDR (to be honest, I’ve never even downloaded anything from there yet), so if someone is willing to explain how the data is structured, I can collaborate by explaining what to measure and how. I can also help do the measurements and analyze the data, but I need significant participation from collaborators. I’m already working on other projects that need more attention from me.
