Epigenetics tagged posts

Father feeding child (stock image). Credit: © YakobchukOlena / Fotolia

A new study sheds light on how. Researchers in Associate Professor Romain Barrès’ laboratory compared sperm cells from 13 lean men and 10 obese men and discovered that the sperm cells in lean and obese men, respectively, possess different epigenetic marks that could alter the next generation’s appetite, as reported in the medical journal Cell Metabolism.

A second major discovery was made as researchers followed 6 men before and 1 year after gastric-bypass surgery to find out how the surgery affected the epigenetic information contained in their sperm cells. The researchers observed an average of 4,000 structural changes to sperm cell DNA from the time before surgery, directly after, and 1 year later.

“We certainly nee...

A putative model attempting to depict different levels of genomic organization that may be associated with specific acquired spermatozoal defects. The sperm nucleus is broken down sequentially until the raw DNA. In human spermatozoa it is proposed that up to 15% of histone complexed DNA may remain after spermiogenesis while the remainder is all protamine complexed. For further information see Ward and Coffey (1991).

A dad’s food intake, drugs, exposure to toxic products and even stress can affect the development and health not only of his unborn children, but even of his grandchildren. They have discovered histones may play a crucial role in the process.

In the past, most epigenetics has focused on a process involving DNA and methyl groups that turn up or down the expression of specific ge...