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DNA is not completely immutable and can change due to external factors such as aging, sun exposure, viruses, and environmental influences. Mutations in DNA can lead to cancer and gene therapy is being studied to change gene expression. Epigenetics evaluates how environmental factors can affect children’s DNA, suggesting lifestyle choices and environmental exposure can change DNA.
Many people are accustomed to thinking of DNA as an immutable programming that governs all of the body’s responses for the rest of a person’s life. In essence, certain things in our DNA are unlikely to change, ever. However, there are a number of external things that could result in a minor DNA change.
As you age, for example, you may notice changes in DNA expression in a variety of ways. Hair turns gray, skin becomes wrinkled, and illnesses are more common. The effect of environmental influence on DNA is still being studied extensively, but there are some known characteristics. For one thing, the changes in DNA could really be called mutations. The programs in some cells don’t work as well, and this is reflected in aging. Exactly why some codes, for example to produce a taut skin, don’t work as well is not fully known. There is a strong assumption, however, that things like sun exposure can change the way DNA works.
Similarly, DNA builds cancerous cells and this is accepted as a mutation of the original intent of DNA, since people shouldn’t have cancer. There are several factors at work here as well. For some reason, the DNA program fails, resulting in abnormal cells. DNA can already influence the likelihood of individuals getting cancer, and the environment can have an effect on DNA, resulting in the production of cancer cells.
Mutations in DNA have also been noted with the introduction of some viruses into the body. In fact, this is a method by which “gene therapy” is being studied extensively. Scientists and medical researchers are using small viral cells, usually from common diseases like the cold, to change small parts of gene expression, as viruses are known to rewrite some of the DNA code.
For the part of the code, it should be understood that DNA change is incredibly small, and governs very few expressions of certain genes. Most of your constituent DNA does not change, and isn’t likely to. There has been a surge in theory in the fields of alternative health and self-help about how changing thinking might involve changing DNA. This is unproven work, although there are some interesting changes that science has noticed. One is a known ability for people who have experienced trauma to evolve new neural pathways in the brain during therapy such as cognitive behavioral therapy, but this may simply be an expression of what brain cells are already coded to do.
Another interesting field that relates to this topic is that of epigenetics, which evaluates how environmental influence can affect your children’s DNA. Previously, the DNA code in reproductive cells was thought to be unchanged, except by mutation. Now scientists are evaluating how it might be changed by slight differences in how people behave before having children.
Your DNA may not only be a matter of inheriting family traits such as hair or eye color or the risk of certain diseases, but it may also be influenced by how your parents behaved, such as being overweight or smoking before conceive children. This has led some to conclude that people waiting until they are older to have children may have significantly changed the DNA of their future children through lifestyle choices and environmental exposure.
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