Our Diet Affects on Our Ancestry DNA

In a recent genetic study of two separate scientists indicate, adult human diet can trigger an epigenetics, the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) environment changes.

Their study also may explain why there is risk of a number of hereditary diseases such as obesity and diabetes. Torsten Plösch from the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, one of the scientists who worked on the study said, eating into the factors that cause changes in all cells, including sperm and ova.

"Its genetic, changes can be passed on to offspring," said Plösch. Quoted and LiveScience, it also departs from a simple idea for example look at the case of children born in the last days of World War II when the Dutch famine. They generally have a degree later in life suffer from various diseases such as susceptibility glucose disorders and cardiovascular disease.

More and more evidence suggests 
that what you eat may have a genetic
impact on your kids and grandkids.  
(Picture from:  http://www.livescience.com/)

In 2010, Jiménez-Chillarón and his colleagues took this a step further and found that overfed male mouse pups developed the telltale signs of metabolic syndrome — insulin resistance, obesity and glucose intolerance — and passed some of these traits to their offspring, which then developed elements of metabolic syndrome without overeating.

But what still is missing, Jiménez-Chillarón told LiveScience, is an understanding of how such information is remembered from generation to generation. Unlike a gene mutation, all of the epigenetic inputs to the DNA environment should be forgotten when a newly formed embryo begins to divide.

"The dogma is that during the process of meiosis [cell division], all epigenetic marks are erased," said Jiménez-Chillarón. "But our work, as well as [the work] from many others, suggests that this is not completely true. Although the majority of epigenetic marks is erased, some marks are spared for unknown reasons."

While the second study, led by Ram B Singh of TsimTsoum Institute in Krakow, Poland, studied on nutrients that influence chromatin. Chromatin is fine yarns composed of amino DNA, histone proteins and non-histone proteins found in the cell nucleus, where the DNA and is a complex operation.

Singh believes only a matter of time until new evidence corroborates eating habits affect the next generation of offspring. The study published in the Canadian Journal of Physiology and Pharmocology July 2012 edition.

Both teams said the development of cells in the early phase tends to occur epigenetics, and is strongly influenced by diet, "diet everyday parents, grandfather, and great grandfather affect our genetics. Similarly, our diet would affect genetic conditions of our children and grandchildren later, "said Plösch. *** [SEPTI | LIVESCIENCE | PIKIRAN RAKYAT 30082012]

This blog can be accessed via your smart phone.