English Trasncript of Joel de Rosnay's interview on Youtube

"Maybe, Joel de Rosnay, it is the right time to talk about epigenetic because you slightly mentioned it as an introduction to the conference but it is a very interesting subject. What is it?"

"It is  more than interesting, I will explain what it is: it is the revolution of these past 5 years not 10, 20 or 30 years, only the last 5 years, there is an abundance of Nobel Prizes on the subject.
You all know about genetic, it is the DNA, the human being programme. For a very long time, we thought that this DNA could not change and it is true in a sense that the changes only happen via "mutations" that take a long time to develop into species that will adapt according to the Darwinian selection.
However, the human being programme code only accounts for 15% of the tools that enable the living cells i.e. the enzimes and the proteins to function. What is the rest, those 85%? As we did not know, we used to call it junk DNA. It was easy, it was stuff that were accumulated with time. Now, we know that those 85% enable the production of small molecules of RNA, which have got a single stem, which are a lot shorter than the big DNA, from 10.15 up to 150 of the genetic code and which are continuously circulating in our body and regulating the expression of our genes. So the epigenetics is the regulation of the expression of our genes, according to what? According to our daily behaviour:
- what we eat
- if you exercise or not
- if you can manage your stress
- if you enjoy what you do
- if you have a supportive personal and social network
These 5 elements mixed together will contribute to the production in your body of small molecules that will attach themselves onto the enzimes, which will go into and be recognised by the core of the DNA. The DNA is inside a protection like an electric cable is inside a plastic tube. This tube is called esistone and is made of proteins. The opening of the esistone will enable the polymerisation of the DNA into the RNA messenger and will produce the proteins and enzimes or not.
It is like a cookery book. You have got a cookery book where some pages are stuck together.
If the pages of the chapter on how to make a cheese soufflé are stuck together, you cannot make a cheese soufflé. But if the pages of the chapter on how to make a chicken casserole are unstuck, you can make a good chicken casserole.
But if you stick the pages of the chicken casserole and unstick the pages for the cheese soufflé, you will make a cheese soufflé.
The DNA is like that, you have got some genes that express themselves, some genes that are dormant and some genes are stopped and that depends on our behaviours.
I will finish on that.
Can you realise what it represents for preventative medicine? Can you realise what it represents for you? You can be responsible for your health. Yes, you can do something for yourself, try to achieve a better health, it is possible, try to slow down the aging process. It is positive not only for you but also for the whole society and I will finish by giving you a precise example of epigenetics.
The bees: all the bee larvae are born with the same DNA, exactly the same. If you feed royal jelly to some bee larvae, they will become queens instead of workers, they will be bigger, they will produce eggs and they will live longer. So, only the food intake enables the esistone to either methyler or ethyler, I won't go into the chemical details, but it is a huge revolution for preventative medicine of the future compared to the therapeutic medicine of today. It is a huge revolution for big pharmaceutical groups as some medication, which sometimes create more harm than good, are regularly withdrawn from the market at the moment.