NOW looks at startling new research that has recovered ancient proteins from dinosaur bones. Could dino DNA be next? Speaking of DNA, it may be the master code of life but something else is pulling the switches. Understanding this switching system, called the epigenome, may lead to cancer cures and even an explanation of why identical twins are not identical. Host and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson investigates this exciting work in the opening two segments of the latest NOVA scienceNOW, airing Tuesday, July 24 at 8 pm ET/PT on PBS (check local listings).
In other explorations, NOVA scienceNOW takes a trip to the courtyard of CIA headquarters where an enigmatic sculpture displays a coded message that has so far stymied the nation's top code breakers, not to mention legions of amateurs. The show also profiles the amazing rise of a poor kid from Belize to the abstract realm of cosmological research, and Tyson closes with another mind-bending "Cosmic Perspective.
All we know about dinosaurs comes from fossils. Thanks to paleobiologist Mary Schweitzer these old bones are telling us more than ever. Schweitzer defied the long-held belief that it was fruitless to search for preserved soft tissues in dinosaur remains. Most experts held that such structures should have decayed away long ago, but Schweitzer has found evidence of delicate structures such as blood vessels and red blood cells that miraculously survived for millions of years. Recently she examined one cross section of 68-million-year-old bone and confidently announced: What we have here is a pregnant Tyrannosaurus rex!
Once nurture seemed clearly distinct from nature. Now it appears that our diets and lifestyles literally change the expression of our genes. How? By influencing a vast network of chemical switches inside our cells. Called collectively the epigenome, the switches turn genes on and off and may account for the fact that identical twins grow less identical as they age. This new understanding may give us potent new medical therapies and even cures, because many diseases now appear to stem from errors in the epigenome, and such epigenetic errors seem easier to correct than genetic ones. Epigenetic cancer therapy, for example, seems already to be yielding stunning results.
