Carlo Alberto Redi is a professor of Zoology at the University of Pavia, academician of the Lincei and president of the ethical committee of the Umberto Veronesi Foundation. Manuela Monti teaches histology and embryology at the University of Pavia. Together they wrote genomics social, a short but dense book published by Carocci in which they explain “how daily life can change our DNA” and, also, like our DNA, thus modified, is transmitted in subsequent generations, thus influencing their health and their future and, at the same time, the society and the world in which we live. Of this Redi and Monti have spoken in an intervention these days in Milan during “Designing Togettherness”, a project by Fondazione Francesco Morelli in the context of The Glitch Camp, the free urban campsite of the European Design Institute.
Professor Monti and Professor Redi, what are two scientists for design week do?
«We asked ourselves too … but in reality it is simple: we were talking about designing togethernss; And being together is linked to what art, literature and design can tell us, but there are also scientific data that tell us that we are all connected, deeply. And we talked about this, of the scientific data ».
The title of the intervention was “from individual to individual”. What does it mean?
«The data strongly indicate that what we consider the individuality, the uniqueness of the person, must be reconsidered: all of us eight billion on the planet we completely share, deep, starting from the genome. From that point of view there is no uniqueness. And we also share in the body: the microbiota, that kilo and a half of protozoa, bacteria, viruses and mushrooms in the intestine that has a crucial role in regulating physiology, immunity, mood and affections, is in common almost one hundred percent with the partner, at 80 percent with the people we work with and 50 percent with those we meet on the means. Therefore talking about individual is limited: we are con-individual ».
In figures?
«Only one per thousand of the genome of each of us is different from that of another: it is an insignificant fraction, and also that one for a thousand does not even codify proteins. This can also be terrifying … however important facts derive from it: first of all that there are no races. And then that the environment intervenes: we are the product of our genes and the environment, understood in a broad sense, such as our interactions, our lifestyle, the diet, where and how we live, our emotions, social, working and family contexts. From the same genome, the results are different if one lives in the Upper East Side in New York or in a country in war ».
The so -called epigenetics. But you add that all this inherits.
«We call it social genomic. If we live with little food or water, or in an environment of great working stress, poverty or violence, or we breathe pollutants, molecules that mark our DNA are produced and modify their behavior and, therefore, also influence the functioning of organs and fabrics; And these changes can be transmitted ».
For example?
«A study showed how children, children of fathers who had been sexually abused as children, have developed important metabolic pathologies. There is the terrible phenomenon of stunting: if in the first thousand days of life they do not receive care and affection, not only do children grow up, but in adolescence they develop cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, sometimes fatal. Over 160 million are the children who suffer from it in the world ».
Is it as if you don’t get rid of your luggage, your past?
“It’s like that. But it also applies to non -negative changes, for example when the way we live stimulates our cells to release the so -called hormones of happiness. And above all, these changes are reversible, therefore politics can act to eliminate inequalities, pollution, poverty. It is convenient for everyone ».
Why are we interconnected?
«If epidemics originate in poverty, or situations of social conflict, the whole society is affected, it is bad. Faced with the development of diseases, health care spends more.
Society has an interest in reducing violence, inequalities, stress and poverty, to help our body; Therefore, it has an interest in being more harmonious. And then generosity is good for cells: it helps us to produce happiness hormones ».