Epigenetics, aging and Obesity
Spring comes, can summer be far behind? After a winter, has your weight increased just as the rising temperature? Excess body fat has a negative effect on health, as well as the coming summer. Therefore, today’s topic is epigenetics and human obesity.
During an organism’s growth, orchestrated chemical reactions affect parts of the genome, activate or deactivate them, at strategic times and in specific locations, yet maintain different terminal phenotypes. The cellular memory which records developmental and environmental cues is the basis of epi-(above)-genetics. Yes, I will share some latest news in Epigenetics, including DNA methylation, histone modification, nucleosome location, or noncoding RNA.
Aging in humans refers to a multidimensional process of physical, psychological, and social change, though aging itself may not be a wonderful thing to most of us due to external signs such as greying hair and wrinkles.
Increasing number of studies have shown that Epigenetic regulatory mechanisms are increasingly appreciated as central to aging. In yeast studies, aging and consequent sterility are found to be correlated with a loss of characteristic heterochromatic silencing at telomeres, mating type locus, and rDNA repeats, which suggests that aging results at least in part from a failure to maintain proper chromatin structure with time. In culture senescent cells, Histone levels are also found to decline during replicative senescence, and several histone methylation and acetylation marks redistribute with senescence associated gene expression changes. Age-related chromatin changes have also been observed in mammalian model. For example, there are significant differences in DNA methylation patterns between young and old mice, and these methylation changes are consistent across a number of different tissue types. Studies on Age-related changes in nuclear structure indicate that aging process is also correlated with breakdown of nuclear architecture, which subsequently may affects regulation of gene expression.
Overall, understanding the relationship of epigenetics and aging, may be beneficial to treatment of aging-related diseases.
Currently, researchers has begun to aim at epigenetic changes in emergence of obesity, and suggest that environmental exposures during early life can induce persistent alterations in the epigenome, which may lead to an increased risk of obesity later in life. The gene-specific DNA methylation studies have focused on many Imatinib CGP-57148Bgenes related to obesity, appetite control, metabolism, insulin signalling, immunity, growth, circadian clock regulation and imprinted genes, and indicate that obesity is associated with altered epigenetic regulation of a number of metabolically important genes. As the main tissue for Pj34 344458-15-7energy storage and important endocrine functions, adipose tissue is of high interest. Some studies indicates that DNA methylation in adipose tissue can change after exercise intervention and display differences between high and low responders to weight loss interventions.
EpiSCOPE is a recently initiated multi-institutional Australian research program that aims to add valuable new information to our understanding of epigenetics and human obesity. buy NepicastatUnderstanding of the relevant knowledge may help in predicting an individual?s obesity risk at a young age, before the phenotype develops, and exploring effective ways to prevent the condition.