The epigenetics of The X-Files

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 mutants the man with a tail and an unusual muscle structure allowing him to mimic facial features surely had some kind of mutation in a muscle fibre gene but the scientific basis of many other cases remained unknown. This shouldnt be surprising: science moves quickly, and weve learned a lot about genetics since the 90s. One of the major advances made since then is in the field of epigenetics a field that I believe has the power to resolve some X-Files cold cases.

In an introductory piece I wrote earlier this year, I described epigenetics as a form of molecular highlighting of the raw four-letter text that is the DNA sequence.

Epigenetic modifications include the addition of a methyl molecule to the DNA itself (could this be the mysterious fifth letter that Scully found in a segment of alien DNA?), and changes to the histone proteins around which the double helix coils itself. This molecular highlighting affects how the DNA text is read in that region, helping to determine which genes are switched on or off in each cell.

Many unresolved X-Files cases that might be accounted for by a genetic mutation could just as easily be explained by an epigenetic modification of the same gene.

For example, in cancer (where the cells epigenetic patterns go just as awry as everything else), the same tumour suppressor genes that are often lost by mutation or deletion can also be eliminated by abnormal methylation patterns in that part of the DNA. If theres also a psychic abilities suppressor gene lurking in our genome, then we can provide a perfectly rational explanation for multiple cold cases in one fell swoop.

But lets move on to something a little more challenging.

An important feature of epigenetics is that the pattern of molecular highlighting isnt fixed. The DNA sequence itself is essentially the same in every cell of the body and through all stages of life; in contrast, epigenetic modifications are different in different cells, change during processes such as metamorphosis (definitely in frogs, so probably also in shape-shifting extraterrestrial species), and can change in response to the environment.

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The epigenetics of The X-Files