Sounds like a lot of it is to do with
epigenetics - this is probably what all the talk about proteins is.
I sent a link to Science Wife - she doesn't really like human biology but she might be interested enough to actually provide some insight
Haha. Does she know we call her Science Wife now?
She tells me she is greatly offended to be linked with the inferior sciences of Chemistry and Physics when she has a 1st in Biology - Biology Wife doesn't really seem ..... right though(?)
She's also not that interested in human biology but is always interested in pointing out how stupid journalists are.
She said the article is like the journalist had a hat full of biology words and picked them out at random. The person who wrote definitely didn't seem to know the difference between mutation (a random change in the DNA sequence) and differences in gene expression (the amount of a protein produced) .
The things that the astronaut experienced seemed quite reasonable for the situation he was in - that's not likely to be random, hence not mutations; more likely to be to do with epigenetics.
The study itself was probably fine, and probably tells us important things to help with the future of space travel but the article is written so badly she's not sure quite what the study actually found - the content of the article doesn't really match up with the headline.
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