Dr. David Sinclair

But it's not just wrapped up willy-nilly.

It's not just a bundle of string.

It's wrapped up very carefully in ways that dictates which genes are switched on and off.

And when we're developing in the embryo, the cell marks the DNA with chemicals that says, okay, this gene is for a nerve cell.

You, you cell will stay a nerve cell for the next hundred years, if you're lucky.

Don't turn into a skin cell.

That would be bad.

And those chemicals, there are many different types of chemicals, but one's called methylation.

Those little methyls will mark which songs get played for the rest of your life.

And there are other marks that change daily.

But in total, what we're saying is that the body controls the genome through the ability to mark the DNA and then compact some parts of it.

silence those genes, don't read those genes, and open others, keep others open, that should stay open.

And that pattern of genes that are silent and open, silent, open, is what dictates the cell's type, the cell's function.

And then the scratches are the disruption of that.

So genes that were once silent

And you could say it's a gene that is involved in skin.

It's starting to come on in the brain, shouldn't be there, but we see this happen and vice versa.

The gene might get shut off over time during aging.

Cells over time lose these structures, lose their identity.

They forget what they're supposed to do and we get diseases.