More and more people are learning about epigenetics. I think that is awesome, and it provides a real avenue of figuring out ways to make things better.
Thus, like a fine restaurant, the ambience is fulfilled by the authentic quality and deliciousness of the content, that is the food.
You really can trimethylate TOR at pine nuts. What it would mean to you as a pine-nut eater is that the plant minimized iits glucose metabolism and lived much longer, and so likely produced some flavor variation on its nuts. Much more than a terroir, these are likely half as big and double protein or double oil. They'll taste different. People that enjoy varietal foods of any kind can talk about epigenetic food. There's room to talk about them knowledgeably and to remember real flavor differences.
Epigenetic Epicureanism is better tasting food that can be named, explained, and talked about. And, very excitingly, compared to your own life and health.
People share 60% of their genes with bananas. As a person casually studying longevity technologies I read about rapamycin, which makes mice live 60% longer. I think it makes Plants partially ignore sugar they make from photosynthesis, similar to "caloric restriction. You might have heard caloric restriction causes greater lifespan as well.
So, conversationally when the waitstaff offer you trimethylated TOR pine nuts, you, who are in the know, are aware the nuts are full of non sugar taste chemicals. Its got that rich adult flavor thing going on.
Over conversation with a friend you can say, "I'd like to trimethylate my mTOR", and you will both sparkle a little bit because basically you just said you would like to live 60% longer. You as a human have TOR (actually mTOR). Conversation about things like this with food might cause people to know a little more about genes.
Lots of things modify epigenetics, and it is not genetic engineering. For the farmers it can be as cheap as soaking seeds in solution before growing the plant. I think they either exist, or we are about to hear of, gardeners who are not practicing ancient crafts, but instead are soaking seeds to methylate and acetylate (etc.) the genomes of their plants to make them ripen differently or taste sweeter. Really. Actual science, and it works like tea-herbalism. One epigenetic modifier, I think it acetylates something is royal jelly from bees.
Just to ensure the well being of the public domain I'm going to mention grapes. To make (protocol) much sweeter grapes you could scrape off some growing part of a grape stem, known as apical meristem, and culture it in a dish. If forms a blob called a callus. You might grind up the callus or possibly even grind it to single cell plant tissue culture. You would add acetylating agents that specifically effected the TOR gene, upregulating TOR at grapes. The gene is still there, you are not changing its genes but all of the plants that then grow from that tissue culture acetylate their TOR in turn.
When you do the simple plant culture thing with a special agar the culture sprouts recognizably-plant looking material, and you grow the plants in the soil/hydroponics.
The exciting news? These grapevines and all their cuttings make the most sugar of any grapes of their variety. Seedless table grapes of heightened sweetness! Grape juice too good for a juicebox! The Sun-Maid Raisin girl, fixes you up on dates with her friends!-- beanangel, Dec 18 2020 This will take me a while to digest.-- pertinax, Dec 18 2020 This will take me even longer than a while to digest.-- blissmiss, Dec 19 2020 The thing is, before reading about epigenetics I would have never thought about making a Grain fat, perhaps plump and full of starch, by giving it diabetes(!)
Putting methyl groups on genes, and again, this is not genetic engineering, causes them to be less active. I could imagine that hypermethylating AMPK would make grains (Rice, Wheat, Corn, Barley, Rye, others) and potatoes have more save-the-world edible calories per plant. They get the human equivalent of high blood sugar.
Using AMPK to to give the plants something analogous to high blood sugar might also make them taste better.
Epicurean epigenetics, scene at a restaurant:
"i can't believe they haven't made a triple sweet melon yet. They could do Tor, AmpK, and AmyA all in one fabulous fruit!
"I had a triple sweet persimmon. It was delicious!".
"Serena, you garden, have you ever made your own epigenetic line?"
"Well, online there's some communities. One group likes to use all natural products to epigenetically modify plants. They do things like soak squished seeds in things like the royal jelly of bees or special herbal teas and then grow them."
"Other people just order little pieces of protein from Amazon that do really specific stuff and soak their seeds or rootlet cuttings in those. Walmart has Seed_Beads. To make your garden better you just pop any seed you want into a little gel bead, and the epigenetics of the plant are changed to "Sweet and early". For flowers there's the "color carnival" beads, they change the way any flower looks a bunch of different ways.
I actually am doing pears. There is a little bag you can tie around a flower to make just that one fruit off an pear tree taste sweet too. I'm alternating triple sweet pears with Double flavor pears on the same tree this year!"
Then, at the play they speak together, "Mild constructive epicurean behaviors can exist".-- beanangel, Dec 19 2020 random, halfbakery