(Medical Xpress)—A new study from Karolinska Institutet indicates that the mode of delivery could make an imprint in the stem cells of the newborn infant. The finding may be of interest for understanding why individuals ...
Jul 3, 2014
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Graying hair, crow's feet, an injury that's taking longer to heal than when we were 20—faced with the unmistakable signs of aging, most of us have had a least one fantasy of turning back time. Now, scientists at the Salk ...
Dec 15, 2016
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Epigenetic changes are chemical modifications that turn our genes off or on. In a new study from Uppsala University, researchers show that tea consumption in women leads to epigenetic changes in genes that are known to interact ...
May 31, 2017
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We are more than the sum of our genes. Epigenetic mechanisms modulated by environmental cues such as diet, disease or lifestyle take a major role in regulating the DNA by switching genes on and off. It has been long debated ...
Jul 14, 2017
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Research published today in the journal Brain reveals a new approach to Alzheimer's disease (AD) that may eventually make it possible to reverse memory loss, a hallmark of the disease in its late stages.
Jan 22, 2019
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A new study from King's College London offers clues as to why chronic pain can persist, even when the injury that caused it has gone. Although still in its infancy, this research could explain how small and seemingly innocuous ...
May 12, 2016
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A growing body of research is revealing associations between birth defects and a father's age, alcohol use and environmental factors, say researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center. They say these defects result ...
May 15, 2016
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A newly published paper in the Lancet journal EBioMedicine identifies a link between high levels of blood lipids and worsening of disease in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients who are overweight or obese.
Apr 11, 2019
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Gene editing may be a potential treatment for anxiety and alcohol use disorder in adults who were exposed to binge drinking in their adolescence, according to the results of an animal study published in the journal Science ...
May 4, 2022
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You are what you eat, the old saying goes, but why is that so? Researchers have known for some time that diet affects the balance of microbes in our bodies, but how that translates into an effect on the host has not been ...
Nov 23, 2016
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In biology, and specifically genetics, epigenetics is the study of heritable changes in gene expression or cellular phenotype caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence – hence the name epi- (Greek: επί- over, above, outer) -genetics. Examples of such changes might be DNA methylation or histone deacetylation, both of which serve to suppress gene expression without altering the sequence of the silenced genes. In 2011, it was demonstrated that the methylation of mRNA has a critical role in human energy homeostasis. This opened the field of RNA epigenetics.
These changes may remain through cell divisions for the remainder of the cell's life and may also last for multiple generations. However, there is no change in the underlying DNA sequence of the organism; instead, non-genetic factors cause the organism's genes to behave (or "express themselves") differently.
One example of epigenetic changes in eukaryotic biology is the process of cellular differentiation. During morphogenesis, totipotent stem cells become the various pluripotent cell lines of the embryo which in turn become fully differentiated cells. In other words, a single fertilized egg cell – the zygote – changes into the many cell types including neurons, muscle cells, epithelium, endothelium of blood vessels etc. as it continues to divide. It does so by activating some genes while inhibiting others.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
