Epigenetics: A new science for middle school - and why you should teach it

Epigenetics is a new field of science that underscores why your students' choices matter. Epigenetics describes how the environment and your experiences can control the rate at which your DNA works. Instead of changing the bases of the DNA, which would be a mutation, the environment that you experience can make chemical tags that are placed on your DNA. These chemical tags serve as a volume control by changing your DNA's ability to be "read", thereby causing changes to your body's structure and function. This article describes this new field of science, some of its mechanisms, why students have been interested in the topic, how it covers NGSS learning objectives, and concludes with a resource and reading list for teachers. Epigenetics illustrates the evolving nature of science and provides the context for how famine, wartime stress, and pollution can have lasting effects for generations. Students can use this new science to explore the crosscutting concepts of patterns, cause and effect, and structure and function to realize a single key understanding that epigenetics offers a 'memory' of our experiences by changing our DNA's ability to be "read" and serves as the science behind our past, present, and future.