CAMELIA BHATTACHARYYA, AMITY UNIVERSITY KOLKATA
It is a norm as well as a truth universally acknowledged that a single person who’s a prey of a situation would not be blamed alone but a scenario of discomfort would be brought upon his family as well. Yes, you read it right and I call it “Pride and the blame game”; you ask “whose?”, I reply, “of the society in general”. While several traits are indeed inherited by an individual following Mendel’s laws or not following it and inheriting through the mitochondria or the cytoplasm, giving rise to terms like “mitochondrial inheritance”, “cytoplasmic inheritance” and “Chromosomal theory of inheritance”, the expression of these genetic information depends a lot on the way the body reads and translates the information. A person’s future might be predicted through linkage, crossing-over, mutations, and so on, but for this prediction to hold certain factors should be considered, and we call it “Environmental epigenetics”.
What is Environmental epigenetics?
Epigenetics mainly involves those changes in the phenotype of an individual which does not include any alterations in the DNA sequence. For example, all cells inherit similar genetic information, yet different cells from different tissues, so are they different in size, shape, structure, and functions. This is where epigenetics comes into play; the repressor proteins control the expression of the DNA sequence by binding itself to its silencer regions thus allowing only certain messages to be read. Thus, these changes do justice to the name (Epi-over, genetics-information stored in the DNA sequences). While these changes are nonreversible, certain changes can be reversed as well and that’s when the role of the environment and the upbringing of an individual comes into play. So. we can say that: when a particular environmental event suppresses the expression of genetic information and the change is inherited to the next generation without even changing the sequence but can be reversed at any stage, we call it “environmental epigenetics”.
How does it work?
In a talk delivered by researcher Dr. Moshe Szyf, he highlighted the fact how parental care affected monkey models in a laboratory. Those with mothers would be more friendly and less arrogant and not attracted to alcohol while those without would be the opposite. All these happened because of DNA methylation. This suggests that the environment is the very reason on which our way of seeing the world depends on. This is even true for identical twins brought up in different environments, they grow up to be completely different in their behaviors. A specific climatic condition determines an individual’s heat tolerance levels and a specific food habit determines his reaction to seeing food. Change the surroundings and the mannerism would slowly change. These are thus a successful way of allowing only specific inherited traits to be expressed while hiding the rest through DNA methylation/demethylation (the cycle includes 5-methylcytosine, 5-hydroxymethycytosine, 5-formylcytosine, 5-carboxylcytosine), histone modifications, etc.
Epigenetics in pollution, nutrition, and health conditions:
Proper nutrition is a much-required thing during pregnancy. The developing fetus might develop an improper or unhealthy epigenome if deprived of proper nutrition. Even pollution during prenatal stages might harm the endocrine system of an individual. Bioactive diets (food containing isothiocyanates, genistein, resveratrol, epigallocatechin-3-gallate, ascorbic acid, etc) are highly preferred to stop unnecessary DNA methylations and demethylations and for a proper epigenome of an individual. Drug abuse is another reason for epigenetic aberrations. Such aberrations are often found in cancerous cells since it often develops the malignant phenotype and induces modifications in the genome.
Take home message:
All these data highly claim how an individual is nothing but a virtue of the environment he/she is raised in thus ensuring the fact that the inheritance is not the sole reason for a problem occurring in a later stage. This in a way also gives a positive message to those planning to adopt children since the genes of an orphan would be manipulated by the care and support or the opposite that he/she might face. An abusive environment or a dirty and polluted surrounding or even certain exposure to harmful substances might change the epigenome of a person. Thus, before blaming a person and the family, try questioning the habits of the society instigating such traits. A child of a criminal might be a better human being if treated well and that of a teacher might be a robber under circumstances. Such is the case when taken into consideration certain diseases as well. Proper diet and care and less impure or artificial chemical-based food might lead to a healthy life for a person.
Also read:Magnetosomes- The New Age Bacterial Magnetic Nanoparticles
Source:
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- Penner-Goeke S, Binder EB. Epigenetics and depression . Dialogues Clin Neurosci. 2019 Dec;21(4):397-405. doi: http://10.31887/DCNS.2019.21.4/ebinder. PMID: 31949407; PMCID: PMC6952745.
- Li S, Chen M, Li Y, Tollefsbol TO. Prenatal epigenetics diets play protective roles against environmental pollution. Clin Epigenetics. 2019 May 16;11(1):82. doi: http://10.1186/s13148-019-0659-4. PMID: 31097039; PMCID: PMC6524340.
- Bollati V, Baccarelli A. Environmental epigenetics. Heredity (Edinb). 2010 Jul;105(1):105-12. doi: http://10.1038/hdy.2010.2. Epub 2010 Feb 24. PMID: 20179736; PMCID: PMC3133724.
- Efimova OA, Koltsova AS, Krapivin MI, Tikhonov AV, Pendina AA. Environmental Epigenetics and Genome Flexibility: Focus on 5-Hydroxymethylcytosine. Int J Mol Sci. 2020 May 2;21(9):3223. doi: http://10.3390/ijms21093223. PMID: 32370155; PMCID: PMC7247348.
- BaylinBaylin SB, Jones PA. Epigenetic Determinants of Cancer. Cold Spring Harb Perspect Biol. 2016 Sep; 8(9): a019505. doi: 10.1101/cshperspect.a019505. PMCID: PMC5008069; PMID: 27194046.
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