Reconstructing the DNA Methylation Maps of the Neandertal and the Denisovan
Excerpt: “…differences in methylation discovered here will help to uncover the epigenetic basis for phenotypic differences between present-day and archaic humans…”
My comment to Science submitted on 4/21/14 at 11:20 (with links added here)
“Elaborate manners of regulation, such as interacting DNA-methylation and histone modification systems, are likely to be the hallmarks of the epigenetic code.” — Epigenomics and the concept of degeneracy in biological systems.
Conserved molecular mechanisms appear to link ecological variation to nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled human ecological adaptations via DNA methylation and phenotypic expression in the honeybee model organism. Thus, epigenetically-effected human morphological and behavioral phenotypes are now linked from DNA methylation to morphological differences in archaic and modern humans in Gokhman et al.(2014). Therefore, it seems likely that the mouse-to-human mammalian model of changes in base pairs that appear to lead to alternative splicings of pre-mRNA and amino acid substitutions, which probably stabilize our biophysically constrained genome, are responsible for nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled morphological and behavioral differences in most, if not all, individuals and species.
See, for review, Kamberov et al. (2013) and Grossman et al. (2013). Although they explained their findings in terms associated with theories, they extended the role of DNA methylation from facts about differences in archaic humans to a modern human population that arose in what is now central China during the past ~30,000 years.
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Addendum: see also the representation of this blast from the past presented in this 5.5 minute-long video as Nutrient-dependent / Pheromone-controlled adaptive evolution: (a mammalian model of thermodynamics and organism-level thermoregulation).
Introduction: Chemical ecology drives adaptive evolution via 1) ecological niche construction, 2) social niche construction, 3) neurogenic niche construction, and 4) socio-cognitive niche construction (Kohl, 2012). Nutrients are metabolized to pheromones that condition effects on hormones that affect behavior in the same way that food odors condition behavior associated with food preferences. For example: glucose (Roland and Moenter, 2011) and pheromones alter the secretion of gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH) and luteinizing hormone (LH). Across species comparisons of epigenetic effects on genetically predisposed nutrient-dependent and hormone-driven invertebrate and vertebrate social and sexual behavior indicate that human pheromones alter the development of the brain and behavior via the same molecular mechanisms (Krubitzer & Seelke, 2012), which are conserved across all species.
