Abstract
Nutritional epigenetics is a sub-discipline of nutrigenomics and describes how dietary compounds affect our epigenome. Chromatin modifiers use intermediary metabolites, such as acetyl-CoA, α-ketoglutarate, NAD+, FAD, ATP or SAM, as co-substrates and/or co-factors. In this way, chromatin modifiers act as sensors for the nutritional status of our tissues and cell types leaving respective marks on their epigenome. The thrifty phenotype is a concept of epigenetic programing of metabolic tissues during pre-natal development. Its principles apply also in adult life and may explain the missing heritability of the susceptibility for complex metabolic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes.
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Further Reading
Avgustinova A, Benitah SA (2016) Epigenetic control of adult stem cell function. Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol 17:643–658
Barres R, Zierath JR (2016) The role of diet and exercise in the transgenerational epigenetic landscape of T2DM. Nat Rev Endocrinol 12:441–451
Carlberg C, Ulven SM, Molnár F (2016) Nutrigenomics Springer Textbook ISBN: 978-3-319-30413-7
Gut P, Verdin E (2013) The nexus of chromatin regulation and intermediary metabolism. Nature 502:489–498
Kinnaird A, Zhao S, Wellen KE, Michelakis ED (2016) Metabolic control of epigenetics in cancer. Nat Rev Cancer 16:694–707
Sales VM, Ferguson-Smith AC, Patti ME (2017) Epigenetic mechanisms of transmission of metabolic disease across generations. Cell Metab 25:559–571
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Carlberg, C., Molnár, F. (2019). Nutritional Epigenetics. In: Human Epigenetics: How Science Works. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22907-8_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22907-8_10
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