What perceptions are shaping your biology?

When teaching medical students at a small school in the Caribbean Sea – Sitting quietly within garden-like island jungles and snorkeling among jeweled coral reefs gave me a window into the island’s amazing integration of plant and animal species. All live in a delicate, dynamic balance, not only with other life forms but with the physical environment as well. It was life’s harmony – not life’s struggle – that sang out to me as I sat in the Caribbean Garden of Eden. I became convinced that contemporary biology pays too little attention to the important role of cooperation because its Darwinian roots emphasize life’s competitive nature. Let us focus on cooperation and life’s harmony.

Now these two disciplines are key! Signal Transduction (the investigation of the “chemical pathways by which cells respond to environmental cues”) and Epigenetics (“the science of how environmental signals select, modify, and regulate gene activity”). This new awareness reveals that the activity of our genes is constantly being modified in response to life experiences. Which again emphasizes that our perceptions of life shape our biology.

Let us plant the seeds in our minds that we would like to grow and blossom.