NUTR 3360 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Gestational Diabetes, Mount Everest, Impaired Glucose Tolerance
26 Sep 2016
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Document Summary
Agouti mouse: model showing how diet and lifestyle effect epigenetics, coat colour variation is correlated to epigenetic marks, wildtype agouti gene encodes a signalling molecule that promotes either yellow or black fur. When the yellow colour (agouti gene) is over expressed, it affects all cells and leads to obesity, type 2 diabetes and tumorigenesis. When the agouti gene is methylated, the fur is brown. Supplementing mothers with methyl donor enriched diets (like high in folate, choline or b12) can alter the phenotype of the offspring, by altering methylation status at the iap retrotransposon. ** main message: more methylation, less expression of the agouti gene** ** coat colour is correlated with degree of dna methylation** **dna mutation must be there originally to facilitate the stochastic affect. Dietary biofactors can alter the epigenome to influence gene expression and ultimately disease risk. Epigenetic modifications vary between tissues = tissue specific gene expression.
