Designer babies?

People tend to get all up in arms about "designer babies," by which I mean babies whose genomes are designed to have, or to not have (or to express or not express) certain traits. Wherever you fall on the issue, you will probably be surprised to know that in many respects, we are already genetically designing our babies, only we are doing so unwittingly and not to positive effect.  For example, babies are in a sense "designed" through the food that women consume while pregnant. Yes, the food. You likely already realize that it's a bad idea to, say, smoke crack and/or drink while pregnant, but the food eaten during pregnancy may be equally important in terms of affecting the developing embryo. Take just two studies I read about recently as examples.

1. What a mother eats while pregnant can significantly affect the likelihood of her child becoming obese. (source)

2.  A pregnant woman's exposure to pesticides can affect her child's IQ. (more)

How do effects like this occur? The answer lies in the fascinating field of epigenetics, which I learned about a few years ago via (what else) an amazing episode of Nova.  As I am not a scientist or a science writer, I'll quote this Time article to explain the epigenome:

At its most basic, epigenetics is the study of changes in gene activity that do not involve alterations to the genetic code but still get passed down to at least one successive generation. These patterns of gene expression are governed by the cellular material — the epigenome — that sits on top of the genome, just outside it (hence the prefix epi-, which means above). It is these epigenetic "marks" that tell your genes to switch on or off, to speak loudly or whisper. It is through epigenetic marks that environmental factors like diet, stress and prenatal nutrition can make an imprint on genes that is passed from one generation to the next.

It's the biological expression of the "nurture" part of "nature vs. nurture"! Isn't that neat?

(Side note: I really wish I had found science this fascinating while it was still early enough in my life to consider science as a career. Social science is great and all, but it's mostly made up. You can quote me on that.)

In any case, it seems that the epigenome of developing embryos can be influenced by the mother's environment, including her diet.  The University of Utah has a neat little site in which they explain how this process works, but it basically boils down to this: what a mother eats can affect whether her offspring express certain genes or not. Here is a vivid visual example of how prenatal diet can affect development (the picture comes from the University of Utah, but the experiment is also explained in the Time article I referenced earlier):

Crazy, right?

Which brings me back to my main point. I'm increasingly of the opinion that the rash of autism and obesity affecting Americans, to pick just two maladies of many, are not "random" occurrences: they are caused by something. Could we, in a sense, be designing obese autistic babies via the epigenome and the mother's diet? It's not outside the realm of possibility.  I, for one, think that it's quite likely--and I haven't even addressed other environmental horrors that might be affecting unsuspecting embryos, nor the impact of what children are exposed to after exiting the womb. But I'll leave that last bit for another day.  I've got some social science to do.

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Related: Books on my Amazon wishlist that I know I shouldn't read but want to anyway:

The Body Toxic: How the Hazardous Chemistry of Everyday Things Threatens Our Health and Well-being

The Hundred-Year Lie: How to Protect Yourself from the Chemicals That Are Destroying Your Health

Slow Death by Rubber Duck: The Secret Danger of Everyday Things

The Unhealthy Truth: One Mother's Shocking Investigation into the Dangers of America's Food Supply--and What Every Family Can Do to Protect Itself

And you thought traffic was simply annoying

Remember when I posted a study suggesting that breathing might kill you?  Well, it turns out it might also (or alternately) give you brain damage.  Breathing in traffic, that is.

A study recently published in the journal Environmental Health and reported on in Time and the Los Angeles Times has discovered that freeway air pollution can cause brain damage in mice.

(Ain't that just swell, says the girl living in the city of a million freeways.)

In the study in question, researchers at USC exposed mouse-brain cells in test tubes and live mice to air laced with nanoparticles akin to those resulting from "burning fossil fuels and bits of car parts and weathered pavements" (to quote Time). These nanoparticles are truly nano, perhaps one-thousandth the width of a human hair. You can't see them, and more jarringly, your car can't filter them out of the air you're breathing. After only 10 weeks and 150 hours, "Both the in vitro brain cells and the neurons in the live mice showed similar problems, including signs of inflammation associated with Alzheimer's disease and damage to cells associated with learning and memory" (quoting Time again).

One of the major concerns coming out of this research is for the development of  children living and attending school near highways.  For not only could young people's brain functioning be altered by the nanoparticles constantly found in the air they breathe, but freeway pollution may be in part responsible for autism, and lung development could be stunted by breathing pollution as well.  And that's just what I found out by clicking on USC press releases. Imagine what researchers at other schools are discovering about the dangers of breathing!

What's to be done?  To quote the team that looked at the mouse brains, "That's a huge unknown."

I suppose not living in Los Angeles, Phoenex or Bakersfield would be a good start. Also, stay away from China.

And if you live near a freeway, think about moving! 

(Or I suppose you could look into these attractive partial solutions offered by Amazon.com.)