It’s a bit late for a Halloween-themed post, and anyway the title is a bit misleading. It’s not really bones I’m going to talk about, but the body in general — truly ‘the body’ as a whole.

Today’s gonna be about epigenetics.

I came across two really fascinating articles about the relationship between epigenetics and air pollution.

What is epigenetics? Here’s a very short and entertaining video, and I hope you watch it before continuing to read, because it covers some very important aspects of epigenetics, DNA, and a human’s environment:

This blog already covered the shocking 5.5 million estimated deaths from China’s horrible air quality, which shows that there is a direct adverse effect on human health from air pollution. What Kirkpatrick’s article suggests is something even more chilling: that the adverse health effects of air pollution even when cleaned up will be present in the human genome expression for generations to come.

There is a lot of science in that article (read it here if you wish), but in short, pollutants found in traffic-related atmospheric pollution (TRAP) —particulates such as PM_2.5 and PM₁₀ and nitrogen dioxide (NO₂)— has proven to effect an epigenetic mark (histone H3 lysine 9 [H3K9]), which affects important functions such as DNA repair, cell differentiation and proliferation, and other cellular processes, among others. When exposed to TRAP for a prolonged time, the gene expression in the mice used for the experiment was found to trigger histone acetylation, all of which translates to higher risk of lung complications. The emphasis on epigenetics is because epigenetic markers can and will be passed down from generation to generation, which means that the high rate of air pollution now will translate into a persistent higher rate of lung complications in the population.

There is, however, a bright spot in this. A study found that vitamin B supplements (found in food or taken as supplements) can prevent another epigenetic change caused by air pollution, which exacerbated inflammatory responses.

So, while we cannot immediately impact the level of air pollution by ourselves, we can definitely incorporate more vitamin B-rich foods into our diet — and keep an eye out for more studies such as this — to somewhat mitigate the harmful effects of our living environment.

-Y

Sources:
Kirkpatrick, B. (2017, November 28). Air Pollution Found to Alter Important Epigenetic Mark. Retrieved from https://www.whatisepigenetics.com/air-pollution-found-to-alter-important-epigenetic-mark/.

Dinga R., Jina Y., Liua, X., Zhub, Z., Zhanga, Y., Wanga, T., Xu, Y. (2016). H3K9 acetylation change patterns in rats after exposure to traffic-related air pollution. Environmental Toxicology and Pharmacology, 42: 170-175.

Kirkpatrick, B. (2018, January 29). B Vitamins Protect Against Harmful Epigenetic Effects of Air Pollution. Retrieved from https://www.whatisepigenetics.com/b-vitamins-protect-harmful-epigenetic-effects-air-pollution/.

Zhong, J. et al. (2017). B vitamins attenuate the epigenetic effects of ambient fine particles in a pilot human intervention trial. PNAS, 114(13):3503-3508.

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