Epigenetics has the power to open up possibilities beyond those offered by genetics alone including the occasional triple word score Photograph: Cath Ennis The X-Files was my absolute favourite television show in the 1990s. My flatmates and I would tune in every week to watch intrepid FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully track down assorted aliens, psychics, vampires, ghosts, and government conspiracies. We bought the soundtrack CD; we even had a poster on our living room wall. It was A Big Deal, for all seven seasons (some people think there were nine seasons, but I refuse to admit that seasons eight and nine or the second movie ever happened). Dana Scully was a scientist, always looking for a perfectly rational explanation for the strange phenomena encountered each week. Many of these explanations were based on genetics, especially in the monster-of-the-week episodes featuring assorted freaks and other abominations not part of the main alien conspiracy storyline. Memorable monsters included such delights as a sewer-dwelling fluke man, and a charming creature possessing the lethal combination of an ability to squeeze through any gap and a taste for human liver. It was easy enough to explain some of these freaks as genetic … Continue reading →