“What would your life be like if you learned that you are more powerful than you have ever been taught?”
“If you could be anybody, who would you be?” Most of us believe that genes control biology and therefore control us. This belief has actually changed the way we think about our lives. When you are convinced that genes control you, you have a good excuse to consider yourself a victim of heredity. This is what Dr. Bruce Lipton tried to explain in his book “The Biology of Belief.” You don’t have to be the victim of heredity. You can change the character of your life by changing your beliefs. This science-based path could take you from being a victim to co- creator of your destiny. His studies and conclusions on epigenetics influenced how we perceive the nature of life. His views were revolutionary as he shifted Biology’s Central Dogma; a belief that genes control us as Charles Darwin tried to explain. In his book, we learn the importance of changing our environment. “The lives of the cells I studied had purpose.” This is why the information you are about to read, or have already read in his book, is powerful. This information offers knowledge of self, and from that knowledge comes power to change your life.
Dr. Bruce Harold Lipton is an American cell biologist famous for his developmental views and contributions in the field of epigenetics. In “The Biology of Belief”, Dr. Lipton outlines a new understanding of life based on his research with stem cells at Stanford University. In his book, Dr. Lipton proclaims that genes do not control biology, and that cellular perceptions of the environment are the primary factor in biological processes. While Dr. Lipton was isolated on an island in the Caribbean Sea in 1985, he experienced a scientific epiphany that shattered his beliefs about the nature of life. His realization was the following: “a cell’s life is controlled by the physical and energetic movement and NOT by its genes. It is a single cell’s awareness of the environment, not its genes, that sets into motion the mechanisms of life.” This is what we call the science of signal transduction. This science covers how environmental signals engage cytoplasmic processes that can alter gene expression and thereby control cell life, influence cell movement, control cell survival, or even sentence a cell to death. This new understanding of nature of life is a new field in biology that Dr. Lipton has influenced and developed called “epigenetics.” The new science of epigenetics has upended our conventional understanding of genetic control. By definition, epigenetics is the control above the genes. It is the science of how environmental signals select, modify, and regulate gene activity.
If we go back to Charles Darwin’s point of view, in his book “The Origin of Species” written in 1859, he stated that individual traits are passed from parents to their children. “Hereditary factors” passed from parent to child control the characteristics of an individual’s life. Fast forward to 1953, a new discovery was made by James Watson and Francis Crick that described the structure and function of DNA double helix. The scientific community believed they had found the secret of life. However, Dr. Lipton began to question not only Darwin’s version of evolution, but also biology’s central dogma, the premise that genes control life. This is because Lipton believed that that scientific premise has basically one major flaw, and it’s the fact that genes are incapable of turning themselves on and off. Genes are not self-emergent, meaning something in the environment has to trigger gene activity. In more simple terms, Lipton is suggesting that human beings are simply the consequence of “collective amoebic consciousness.” In chapter 1, “Lessons from the petri dish, in praise of smart cells and smart students”, Dr. Lipton declared that each cell is an intelligent being that can survive on its own. These “smart” cells are imbued with intent and purpose. According to Lipton, the lives of the cells he studied had purpose, and this is why they actively seek environments that support their survival and with no doubt simultaneously avoid toxic ones. A professor who also supported Lipton was Timothy Lenton. In a 1998 article, he wrote: “rather than focusing on individuals and their role in evolution, we must consider the totality of organisms and their material environment to fully understand which traits come to persist and dominate.”
In chapter 2 of his book, Lipton emphasized the importance of the environment in which cells live in. Lipton’s observations led him to conclude the following: when cells were provided with a healthy environment, they thrived. However, when the environment was less than optimal, the cells faltered. When the environment was adjusted, the “sick” cells revitalized. Moreover, it is of highly importance to highlight the role proteins play in our bodies. Lipton describes proteins as the stuff of life. Our cells are made up of: polysaccharides (complex sugars), lipids (fats), nucleic acids (DNA/RNA), and proteins. Though cells indefinitely require all four molecular types, proteins are the most important component for living organisms. Why is that so? Basically, our cells are an assembly of protein-building blocks. And it takes over 100,000 different types of proteins to run our bodies. However, proteins are malleable and are linked by peptide bonds. These links between the amino acids enable each protein to adopt a variety of shapes. This unique shape the protein makes is what we scientifically call the conformation. Two factors that determine the conformation of a protein are the physical patterns defined by the sequence of amino acids and the interaction of electromagnetic charges among the amino acids. Based on this information, how do proteins create life? As we all know, what distinguishes as from nonliving entities is the fact that we move, or as described in the book, “we are animated.” The energy driving the proteins’ movements is harnessed to do the work that characterizes living systems. The constant shape-shifting movements of proteins which can occur thousands of times in a single second are the movements that propel life. This is why in order to understand the nature of life; one must first understand how proteins are empowered to move.
Going back to the primacy of DNA, Darwin suggested that hereditary factors were passed from generation to generation controlling the traits of the offspring. Watson and Crick unraveled the structure and function of DNA. They described the DNA molecule to be long and threadlike and consisting of four nitrogen chemicals called Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine, and Guanine. However, Watson and Crick’s discovery of DNA’s structure led to the fact that the sequence A, T, C, and G bases in DNA actually spelled out the sequence of amino acids. Additionally, since DNA is a double helix meaning each strand can make an exact complimentary copy of itself containing the same information, it was assumed that DNA controlled its own replication. This is where Biology’s Central Dogma (belief that DNA rules) started.
Nevertheless, in the late 1980s a global scientific effort begun to create a catalog of all the genes present in humans. Before expanding on this idea, it should be stated that scientists should have known that genes couldn’t provide the control of our lives. The brain is the organ responsible for controlling the behavior of an organism, yes. But is the nucleus truly the cell’s brain? If the assumption truly was that the nucleus and its DNA are the “brain” of the cell, then, surely, removing the cell’s nucleus, a process called enucleation should undoubtedly result in the immediate death of the cell. An experiment was done in Lipton’s book, and after enucleation, Lipton realized that the cell is still moving... It’s still alive! After enucleation, the cell can survive for up to two or three more months without genes. The cell eventually dies becausewithout its genes cells can’t divide, can’t reproduce, or even replace the protein parts they lose. Now, you might be wondering, if the nucleus and its genes are not the cell’s brain, then what is DNA’s contribution to cellular life? As said, enucleated cells don’t die because they have lost their “brain” but because they lost their reproductive capabilities. Then what exactly is DNA’s contribution? As Lipton stated: “The nucleus is not the brain of the cell- the nucleus is the cell’s gonad!”
This is why while the human genome project was making its headlines in the 1980s, a group of scientists were discovering a new revolutionary field in epigenetics that changes our understanding of how life is controlled. As Lipton described it: environmental influences, including nutrition, stress, and emotions can modify those genes without changing their basic blueprint. You need an environmental signal to change the protein shape. Once the DNA is uncovered, the cell makes a copy of the exposed gene. As a result, the activity of the gene is controlled by the presence and absence of proteins, which are in turn controlled by environmental signals. The flow of information is not from the DNA to RNA to Protein as first assumed in the central dogma, but from environmental signal to regulatory protein to DNA to RNA to protein.
In conclusion, our perceptions of life shape our biology. This research offered undeniable proof that biology’s most cherished beliefs regarding genetics are flawed. This new science has upended conventional views and offered new scientific understandings of the nature of life. Personally, I hope everyone recognizes that many of the beliefs controlling our lives are self- limiting. The path to personal empowerment is comprehending how cells respond to thoughts and perceptions. The apprehensions we gain from this new science can unleash the power of consciousness, matter, and even miracles. We are not victims of our genes. We are the masters of our fate. As Lipton said: I no longer ask myself: “If I could be anybody, who would I be?” The answer is a no-brainer. I want to be me!