Understanding epigenetic: What is epigenetics research?

The study of epigenetics explores how lifestyles and environments can influence a person's genes. Researchers have made great progress in epigenetics this year. They have uncovered information that can be useful for understanding hereditary diseases, and more studies are underway to understand aging.

Epigenomic treatment in chemotherapy

In an epigenetic research led by Celine Vallot, researchers looked at the epigenetic changes induced by chemotherapy in cancerous cells. They found genes whose expression allowed cells to tolerate treatment and other epigenomic changes that affected the expression of the genes.

According to the study, epigenomic marks suppress or lock the expression of these genes in rare cells without treatment. They also have found that these suppressive marks jump under chemotherapy. By preventing this lock from jumping, cancer cells continue to be sensitive and susceptible to treatment.

This study demonstrates how the epigenome influences cancer treatment resistance. Researchers are now actively examining how this concept may be applied to humans therapeutically.

Discoveries in DNA reveal a critical "accordion effect" in genes

Meanwhile, another epigenetic research has shed light on how an "accordion effect" is crucial to turning genes off, transforming our understanding of gene silencing.

According to findings by a team led by Professor Marnie Blewitt and Dr. Andrew Keniry, an accordion-like trigger plays an important role in the process. They discovered that to turn off a gene, DNA packaging becomes loose before it is compressed tightly. In the same way an accordion must be opened before it can be compressed to produce a note, they discovered that they needed to open up DNA before it could compress and silence a gene.

Findings from the study expand the medical community's understanding of how genes switch on and off as fetuses develop in the womb. The kinds of cells that make up the human body are made due to genes that are switched on and off.

Decoding the epigenetic mechanisms

The development of hereditary diseases, cancers, and cardiovascular disease may be linked to genomic imprinting, which results in only maternally or only paternally passed on genes being expressed.

Many genetic and epigenetic diseases are impacted by genomic imprinting. Theoretically, reactivating a deactivated, healthy gene would permit the correction of defects caused by an active, defective gene.

Researchers provided a comprehensive view of the epigenetic mechanisms maintaining genomic imprinting with their epigenetic research.

Epigenetic changes are likely to occur as people age, and duplicate genetic activity may have a detrimental effect.

Biological aging and the development of bowel cancer

Genes may function differently as people age due to DNA changes. These genetic changes may alter the genes' functionality. DNA methylation is an epigenetic marker often used to determine age. Having a biological age that is older than one's chronological age is what they call epigenetic age acceleration, and this has been linked to the development of bowel cancer.

While epigenetics is useful for predicting cancer risk or detecting the disease early, it remains unclear whether accelerated epigenetic aging causes cancer.

The epigenetic age acceleration is a causal mediator between risk factors and the development of bowel cancer. Further research must be conducted to determine whether lifestyle changes or clinical interventions can slow epigenetic age acceleration.

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