Epigenes

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Epigenes is also the name shared by other figures of antiquity. Epigenes the Sicyonian is considered to be the most ancient writer of tragedy. There was also an Athenian comic poet by the same name who may have been a contemporary of Antiphanes.

Epigenes (Έπιγένης) of Byzantium (unknown-circa 200 BC) was a Greek astrologer. He seems to have been strong supporter of astrology, which, though derided by many Greek intellectuals, had been accepted and adopted by many Greeks from the seventh century BC through commercial contact with the Chaldeans of Babylonia.

It is unclear when Epigenes lived -he may have lived about the time of Augustus; some conjecture that he lived centuries earlier- but he is known to have refined the study of his chosen field, defining Saturn, for example, as "cold and windy." Along with Apollonius of Myndus and Artemidorus of Parium, he boasted of having been instructed by the Chaldean priest-astrologers, many of whom infiltrated Greece when the ports of Egypt opened to Greek ships after 640 BC.[1]

Epigene's claims to have been educated by the Chaldeans comes from the writings of Seneca (Nat. Quaest., vii. 30.). Pliny the Elder (Historia Naturalis, vii. 56) writes that Epigenes attests to the fact that the Chaldeans preserved astral observations in inscriptions upon brick tiles (coctilibus laterculis) extending to a period of 720 years. Pliny calls Epigenes a writer of first-rate authority (gravis auctor imprimis).

The 55-km lunar crater Epigenes is named after him.

[edit] External links

• Dictionary of Roman and Greek Biography and Mythology
• Astrology History in Egypt
• Astrology and Religion Among the Greeks and Romans

It's all in the epigenes Until recently, most scientists agreed that our genetic makeup was hard-wired into our DNA. But the once-scoffed science of epigenetics -- which proposes that newer, environmentally formed traits can be passed on to our offspring -- is gaining support in traditional circles

Research led by McGill University's Moshe Szyf suggests a person's environment may be more important than the kind of genes he or she has in determining health outcomes such as cancer and heart disease. 

Photograph by : Allen McInnis, The Montreal Gazette

Daniel Tencer, The Ottawa Citizen

Published: Saturday, August 26, 2006 Arturas Petronis and Moshe Szyf know a little something about the fads of science. As pioneers in the budding field of study known as epigenetics, they took their share of abuse for supporting scientific theories that, for many years, were considered heresy among most scientists.

Mr. Petronis, head of epigenetics at the University of Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, once applied for a research grant, and received the following anonymous written comment: "This is shit."

Mr. Szyf, a professor of pharmacology at McGill University in Montreal, had a proposed research article of his described as "a misguided attempt at scientific humour."

"What they do is crush any opinion that doesn't fit theirs," Mr. Szyf says. "I was told not to work on (epigenetics) if I ever wanted a career."

But what a difference a few years makes. Mr. Petronis and Mr. Szyf are now both mini-celebrities in the increasingly accepted field of epigenetics, which postulates that there is a "second code" of programming on top of our DNA, a code that -- unlike DNA -- can change during our lifetimes. In the past half decade, epigenetics researchers have theorized that our diet, the chemicals we are exposed to and even our behaviour towards one another can cause changes in the way that our genes are expressed -- and some of those changes may even be passed on to future generations.

That, in turn, has caused many scientists to rethink almost everything we know about how genetic information is passed on from parent to child. The traditional view of genetics has been almost deterministic: We are born with a code that dictates everything we are, physiologically. Our genes work the same way from the day we are born to the day we die. Our destiny, geneticists said, was written in our DNA. But now scientists are beginning to think that people aren't just shells to carry on DNA, but rather the "caretakers" of our genetic code. How we live, epigenetics researchers say, changes the way our genes function, and some of those changes can be passed on to our children