Benefits Of Epigenetics

Before conducting research and watching numerous informational videos on epigenetics, I would have never believed that when my grandmother was my age, she made dietary decisions that have affected me. Technically speaking, epigenetics simply means above genetics. In other words, epigenetics is the traits that you and I inherit, but do not necessarily necessitate the sequence of genes. I took me a while to actually grasp the concept until I thought of it from a musical perspective. Imagine our DNA helix strands as a musical score. There are different music notes as there are genes. If someone were to play Beethoven’s Symphony Number 5 correctly, it would sound the same every time. Basically, if one note is changed, the whole musical piece

What is Epigenetics? It is the study of heritable changes in gene expression that do not involve changes to the DNA sequence. Epigenetics is the change in phenotype without a change in genotype, which in turn affects how cells read genes. Its change can be influenced by several factors including age, the environment or lifestyle, and disease state. Epigenetic can also have damaging affects that can result in diseases like cancer. The results show that changes will occur to the function and/or regulation of these molecules, without altering their primary sequences. Epigenetics modifications are stable and passed on to future generations and they are dynamic and change in response to environmental stimuli.

Epigenetics studies the evolvement of an organism while certain chemical reactions have place activating and deactivating parts of the genome at different times and in particular locations. It also studies the agents than influence those chemical reactions. It affects how genes are read by the cells. It deals with the idea that environmental factors could have a key role on the health not only of the people in contact with them, but to the health of their descendants. It’s not only related to passing negative health traits but positive healthy factors (Rettner, 2013).

The research of epigenetics has evolved from the twentieth century from two scientists including Conrad H. Waddington and Ernst Hadorn who combined genetics and biology. There was an interest in this study in the 1990s. Research has evolved trying to figure out the changes caused by epigenetic mechanisms. This field is growing as researchers are unraveling environmental and lifestyle influences on genes (Epigenetics, n.d.). This paper will discuss differences in epigenetics and genetics, current research of epigenetics, and diseases associated with epigenetics.

Epigenetic reveals to us that your daily habits can affect not only you but your offspring as well for those who are pregnant. Your lifestyle as well as the environment around you has the ability to control your epigenetic. Furthermore, the food you eat as well as how often you exercise may determine the health, the risk of disease and general well-being of you or your future child. To ensure a healthy life is to take care of your epigenetics and that of your future child through healthy diet and exercising

Cancer is beyond mutations. By definition, epigenetics is the change in gene translation that is caused by alterations not directly due to genetic mutations in the DNA sequence. The 2 main mechanisms are DNA methylation and covalent modification of histones. By methylation, certain molecular tags (methyl groups) bind to a specific sequence of a gene, that results in its disability hence incapable of being translated into its appropriate protein product. These changes affect the cell’s functions leaving its DNA unchanged. Epi is derived from Latin meaning above; hence an epigenetic configuration overlies our genetic predispositions.

The reason for this is that epigenetics can silence tumor suppressors all though that is negative side of epigenetics it is also positive, it can also turn off negative genes like cancer or family diseases known to be passed down. Tumor suppressors which protect abnormal cell growth can be turned off by epigenetics but with new research scientist are finding a way to silence certain epigenetics. In this new research scientist are finding ways to turn on or silence certain epigenetics, doing this could prevent someone from inheriting a family disease like factor 5 Leiden which in my case my mother has and could have passed on to me although I have been tested and I didn’t inherit that trait epigenetics could have silenced that trait off for me or it could be a recessive trait which means it would skip me but could be inherited by my children. That is why doctors are researching ways to silence or turn on certain traits, this could save many people from diseases known in your family or help someone turn on tumor suppressors that are there to help our cells from becoming

Epigenetics studies genetic effects not encoded in the DNA sequence of an organism, hence the prefix epi- . Such effects on cellular and physiological phenotypic traits may result from external or environmental factors that switch genes on and off and affect how cells express genes. These alterations may or may not be heritable, although the use of the term epigenetic to describe processes that are heritable is controversial. instead, non-genetic factors cause the organism 's genes to behave differently.

In one very scientific example of epigenetics in work, scientists were looking at mice and a fear response. In the initial set of male mice, they exposed the mice to a particular smell and then immediately after

Epigenetics is a field of study concerning genetic modifications due to changes in gene expression, rather than changes in the gene itself. There are countless epigenetic modifications that regulate gene expression, such as DNA Methylation or Gene Silencing, and all of these changes, if they occur in the germline, are preserved through DNA multiplication, and thus will be passed on to progeny. Moreover, these alterations can also take place in the somatic cells of the body and still be passed on to the next generation, through an interrelated alteration that takes place in the germline cells. It is this observation that has baffled scientists for generations, as it is an idea that truly lies at the heart of the “nature vs. nurture” argument.

Epigenetic changes can be defined as functional, heritable changes in DNA, that do not involve a change in the nucleotide sequence[1]. Transcriptional regulation can be controlled through epigenetic modification and thereby can affect gene expression (44). Epigenetic modifications are important regulators of numerous biological processes like spermatogenesis. Nowadays there is a lot of attention to epigenetic changes as a role in identifying genetic causes of male infertility. In fact epigenetic regulations play an important role in proper spermatogenesis and fertility preservation (45).

The activity of genes is reliant on mostly on whether they are available to transcription factors; this is vastly controlled by the dynamics of chromatin restructuring. Epigenetic modifications on the chromatin play a vital role in regulating the construction of chromatin and thus the availability of DNA for transcription. Some of the sites at the DNA that are transcripted can be turned on or off by epigenetic changes. Moreover, it has previously been verified that environmental factors, for example diet, cigarette and alcohol use, stress, or exposure to chemical carcinogens and infectious agents, Sexuality and age effect the epigenome. Today, because of importance in epigenetic processes, most scientists prefer to work in this field of research.

Epigenetic processes intimately link environmental factors to our genetic code, by allowing outside events to leave biochemical footprints on our genome. Modern epigenetics can be defined as ‘the structural adaptation of chromosomal regions so as to register, signal or perpetuate altered activity states' (Bird, 2007) (see Box 1 for a detailed definition of epigenetics). Therefore, epigenetics offers mechanisms by which cells that are equipped with identical genetic information can acquire and maintain an individual molecular fingerprint reflecting not only the cell's history, but also programming its response to future events (Levenson and Sweatt, 2006). Two of the most prominent epigenetic mechanisms are DNA methylation (DNAme) and histone

In the first half of the twentieth century, developmental biology and genetics were separate disciplines. The word epigenetics was coined by Waddington to link the two fields. Epigenetics could be defined as the study of changes in gene expression that occur without a change in DNA sequence and are meiotically or mitotically heritable. Several decades later specific mechanisms were proposed in which information was superimposed on DNA sequences. Such changes in gene expression are achieved through the methylation of DNA, the post-translational modifications of histone proteins, and RNA-based silencing. Epigenetics has been implicated in complex diseases such as cancer, schizophrenia, cardiovascular disease and systemic lupus

Epigenetics can be hereditable or environmental factors that affect the expression of genes and lead to changes in gene expression. Unlike genetics, epigenetics does not only have to do with which genes are passed down to the offspring and the DNA sequence. The environmental conditions of the offspring’s parents impact the genes in their eggs and sperms by “switching on” certain genes and “switching of” others (Dowshen). Since the genes expression of the gametes are affect, the phenotypes of the offspring will change. Even in a person’s lifetime, environmental factors such as stress, chemical exposure, and diet can continue to impact gene expression through DNA methylation. During DNA methylation, a methyl group is randomly added to a 5-carbon cytosine ring, making 5-methylcytosine and these groups inhibit transcription. (Cheriyedath). Due the fact that transcription is not possible, the expressing of the genes in that section of the DNA strand will be suppressed. The attachment of the methyl group to DNA is not determined, which means that