Gene Expression and Its Discontents: The Social Production of Chronic Disease, Edition 2

· Springer
Ebook
344
Pages
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About this ebook

Gene Expression and its Discontents examines a class of probability models describing how epigenetic context affects gene expression and organismal development, using the asymptotic limit theorems of information theory in a highly formal manner. Taking classic results on spontaneous symmetry breaking abducted from statistical physics in groupoid, rather than group, circumstances, the work suggests that epigenetic information sources act as analogs to a tunable catalyst, directing development into different characteristic pathways according to the structure of external signals. The results have significant implications for epigenetic epidemiology, in particular for understanding how environmental stressors, in a large sense, can induce a broad spectrum of developmental disorders in humans. The authors then apply the perspective to a number of chronic diseases broadly associated with obesity, using data at different scales of observation.

About the author

Rodrick Wallace PhD is a research scientist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, received his B.S. in mathematics and a Ph.D. in physics from Columbia University.. A recipient of an Investigator Award in Health Policy Research from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. He has published many papers adapting quantitative methods from population, community and ecosystem ecology to the theoretical and empirical analysis of problems of public health and public order. Recently he has attempted to adapt methods from information theory to the study of evolutionary process in medical sociology, biology and economics.

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