HLTB22H3 Lecture Notes - Dna Demethylation, Epigenome, Cardiovascular Disease
Document Summary
Epigenetics: epigenetics is the study of how your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way your genes work. Unlike genetic changes, epigenetic changes are reversible and do not change your dna sequence, but they can change how your body reads a dna sequence. 2 main forms of epigenetic modification: methylation, histone acetylation. Fraga et al. (2005: demonstrates how dyanmic and changing the epigenome is. Explains how twins who spend less time together grow older, their epigenomic profile changes due to different environmental exposures. Children ate 400-800 calories per day: as adults, these children expeirence twice the risk of cardiovascular disease, higher rates of obesity, high blood pressure, hospitalization rates, grand children were also of small gestation age. The dutch famine study looked at the effects of restricted maternal nutrition during different stages of gestation. Hunger winter cohort died at a higher rate than people born before or afterward.
