We All Must Methylate!
Check out the folate metabolism section of your ToolBox Genomics Health Action Plan!
To help answer this question, I’m going to use bees to help demonstrate how epigenetics works. Bees select for and create queen bees by feeding her a special diet. The worker bees select a particular worker bee and feed her a diet exclusively of royal jelly. Royal jelly “turns on” or activates genes in the selected bee and begins the process of changing her from a worker bee to a queen bee (1).
The term epigenetics in its broadest sense is a change in gene expression that does not involve actual changes to your DNA. The most common causes of the changes in gene expression are histone modification and DNA methylation. Methylation is the addition of a methyl group: a fancy way of saying a carbon with 3 hydrogens is added to DNA. You can have too many methyl groups (over-methylation) or too few methyl groups (under-methylation). Histones are proteins that help fold the DNA into compact packages and impacts gene activity. For both methylation and histone modifications, you need the Goldilocks effect: not too many, not too few. The body works hard to keep this balance and the body depends on having access to enough nutrients and building blocks to maintain everything “just right.” Methylation and histones can be easily influenced by diet and environment. Some of the most common nutrients that help support methylation are B-vitamins, specifically folate and choline. Biotin, another type of b-vitamin, sulforaphane (a compound from broccoli) and caloric restriction appear to cause changes to histones which may help protect the body against certain conditions (2).
Depending where methyl groups are attached or histones are modified, these changes in your DNA can be passed to future generations thorugh the sperm and egg. For example, mothers who smoked while pregnant induced methylation changes in certain parts of the babies’ DNA. These methylation changes were still present even when the children were ~ 7 years of age (3). In Sweden, researchers discovered that young men who were exposed to famine while their sperm was developing about 8-9 years of age had grandsons who lived longer than men who were exposed to “feasting” during the same age (4). In fact, the grandsons of the feasting grandfathers had their life span shortened by 6 years and often developed diabetes (5).
In conclusion, while these small changes to our DNA structure may seem rather harmless, I think it is vital to realize that cells adapt to their environment and make changes to support the body and more importantly, those changes can be passed on to future generations which may help protect or pre-dispose our future generations to certain conditions. If you are curious about the status of your body’s ability to methylate, we recommend looking at the folate metabolism section of your Toolbox Genomics Health Action Report.
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Further research to explore:
(3) DNA Methylation in Newborns and Maternal Smoking in Pregnancy: Genome-wide Consortium Meta-analysis
(4) Kaati et al., “Transgenerational Response to Nutrition, Early Life Circumstances and Longevity.”