Epigenetics
Changing gene’s expression
Epigenetics means what we eat, how we live and love, alters how our genes behave.
Suppose, you are a poet writing or thinking of a poem sitting on a boat in a river and your genes are helping you to do so. But is this everything? The answer is no. Some experience may have been imprinted into some of your genes helping to boost your imagination, creating a simulation of an experience that might have been experienced by your great grandfather. Your great grandfather might have had an experience of similar type, in a similar river, on a similar boat, and had probably created similar imagination. This is nothing but epigenetics. Epigenetics is the study of the interaction of genes, experience, and environment in the expression of a trait. It is the change in the expression of a gene without changing its base sequence. Methylation, which is the addition of methyl group in the regulatory regions of a gene, does the trick, alters the gene expression, gives an experience that has never been experienced by someone and this can be transmitted to the next generation to give that experience. "Nutrition isn't a fleeting affair," said Jirtle, a life scientist."We are, quite literally, what we eat as well as what our parents and even grandparents ate."Duke scientists explain methylation as putting gum on a light switch. The switch is okay, but the gum has blocked its function. The environment we grow up in is as important as our DNA in determining the person we ultimately become. Diet, life style and environment may act as the player in this variable expresssion of the genes. A team of scientists in Switzerland by experimenting on mice found the involvement of a family of genes in the brain to be helpful to cope with stress conditions. Depending on the level of expression, some people are more susceptible to stress conditions, such as anxiety and depression, than others. One of the scientists in this research group states "It's a way for a cell to have a sort of memory", while describing what epigenetic alterations are. So, by altering epigenetic marker later in life, maternal programming can be changed or reversed by methyl supplementation. A study in 2005 revealed this phenomenon in the journal of neuroscience. Altered methylation patterns are observed changing human cognition and behavior. Indeed, epigenetic research can offer a lot for us. DNA methylation, the process of epigenesis, can permanently turn genes of an organism on or off for an entire lifetime. The University of Utah Genetic Science Learning Center highlighted some study results of how changes in epigenetic tags affect behavior, and how behavior can change epigenetic tags. People who commit suicide have less-active ribosomal RNA genes than people who die of other causes. Child abuse is an environmental factor that leaves an epigenetic mark on the brain.CBP is a protein that is important for activating genes involved in learning and with memory. The gene for REELIN protein has less methyl, and hence is more active than normal one in schizophrenic brains. Flowering of plants and cancer progression can be controlled by epigenetic mechanisms. Methyl groups can be obtained through diet incorporated into folate and methionine pathways and eventually the low dietary levels of folate and metionine can have serious consequences such as neural deformities, cancer progression and heart diseases. So, a combination of nature and nurture seems to be effective in maintaining appropriate and beneficial epigenetic regulation. In Duke University health news they state, "Epigenetics means what we eat, how we live and love, alters how our genes behave". Epigenetics is and will be a fascinating research area in biological science in the days to come.
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