(Press-News.org)
Epigenetics, the chemical mechanisms that controls the activity of genes, allows our cells, tissues and organs to adapt to the changing circumstances of the environment around us. This advantage can become a drawback, though, as this epigenetic regulation can be more easily altered by toxins than the more stable genetic sequence of the DNA.
An article recently published at Science with the collaboration of the groups of Dr. Manel Esteller, Director of the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute (IJC-CERCA), ICREA Research Professor and Chairman of Genetics at the University of Barcelona, and Dr. Lucas Pontel, Ramon y Cajal Fellow also of the Josep Carreras Institute, demonstrates that the substance called formaldehyde, commonly present in various household and cosmetic products, in polluted air, and widely used in construction, is a powerful modifier of normal epigenetic patterns.
The publication is led by Dr. Christopher J. Chang, of the University of California Berkeley in the United States, whose research group is pioneer in the study of the effects of various chemical products on cell metabolism. The research has focused on investigating the effects of high concentrations of formaldehyde in the body, a substance already been associated with an increased risk of developing cancer (nasopharyngeal tumours and leukaemia), hepatic degeneration due to fatty liver (steatosis) and asthma. Dr. Esteller points out that this is relevant because “formaldehyde enters our body mainly during our breathing and, because it dissolves well in an aqueous medium, it ends up reaching all the cells of our body”.
“This substance is especially concentrated in various products used in construction, furniture manufacturing, the textile industry and some hair products", comments Dr. Esteller. Going a step further, Dr. Pontel stresses this vision pointing out that “formaldehyde is not only a significant environmental hazard, often found in polluted fumes, but it can also be generated within our bodies through the metabolism of common dietary substances like the sweetener aspartame. Moreover, our cells are continually producing formaldehyde, a known mutagen that can lead to cancer”.
As an overview of the research, Dr. Esteller points out that "we have discovered that formaldehyde is an inhibitor of the MAT1A protein, which is the main producer of S-Adenosyl-L-Methionine (SAM) and this last molecule is the universal donor of the chemical group "methyl" that regulates epigenetic activity. Specifically, we found that exposure to formaldehyde induced a reduction in SAM content and caused the loss of methylation of histones, proteins that package our DNA and control the function of thousands of genes”.
Altogether, this work reveals an even more concerning aspect of formaldehyde's toxicity. Dr. Pontel summarizes it as “we have discovered that formaldehyde has the capacity to modify the epigenetic landscape of our cells, which might contribute to the well-documented carcinogenic properties of formaldehyde.”
The epigenetic changes caused by the toxic agent could directly contribute to the origin of the mentioned diseases, beyond its known mutagenic properties. On this regard, Dr. Esteller informs that "International health authorities are already restricting the use of formaldehyde as much as possible, but there are still areas of work where high levels of it are used, such as in the manufacture of resins, the production of plastic, industrial foundries or the cosmetics industry. In addition, it also originates during the combustion of automobile gasoline and in tobacco smoke, thus, environmental and health policies aimed at reducing our exposure to the characterized substance should be promoted.”
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DENVER/Nov. 2 – A scientific analysis published in Veterinary and Comparative Oncology using Golden Retriever Lifetime Study data notes a potential correlation between canine sterilization and hemangiosarcoma development. This startling finding has been previously suggested by experts but still is poorly understood.
The authors note that the likelihood of diagnosing hemangiosarcoma appears consistently low across all sexes and neutering statuses until about eight years of age. Beyond this point, intact and neutered male ...
Excluding herbivores – or reintroducing their predators – may aid restoration efforts in many locations, suggests a new meta-analysis of more than 600 global studies. According to the analysis, herbivores at restoration sites reduced vegetation abundance by 89%, on average, a larger effect than they had at relatively undisturbed sites. Herbivores also suppressed plant diversity at these locations. Vegetation is a primary foundation of most ecosystems. However, in many, it has been dramatically degraded, contributing to the loss of biodiversity and ...
Driven in part by large-scale atmospheric climate modes, the Southern Hemisphere accounts for more than 95% of the recent decline in global water availability, according to a new study. Global land water availability has varied due to climate change and increased human water use. Although this crucial resource underpins livelihoods, socioeconomic development, and ecosystems worldwide, it remains unclear how water availability has changed in recent decades and what is driving these changes at a global scale. Yongqiang Zhang and colleagues combine various data, including streamflow observations of large river basins of ...
At the 2022 COP-15 meeting, signatories of the Convention on Biological Diversity reached a new agreement called the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which contained provisions to establish a separate, multilateral benefit-sharing mechanism for the use of “digital sequence information” (DSI), that is, the biological data associated with, or derived from, genetic resources such as nucleotide sequences and epigenetic, protein, and metabolite data.
In a new Policy Forum analysis published ...
Francis Crick Institute press release
Under strict embargo: 18:00hrs GMT Thursday 2 November 2023
Peer reviewed
Observational study
People and animals
Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute and Heidelberg University in Germany have shown that sex differences in animals vary dramatically across species, organs and developmental stages, and evolve quickly at the gene level but slowly at the cell type level.
Mammals have different traits depending on sex, like antlers in male deer. These are known as ‘sexually dimorphic’ traits, and include differences which aren’t visible, ...
A team of researchers from UCLA has unveiled a first-of-its-kind stable and fully solid-state thermal transistor that uses an electric field to control a semiconductor device’s heat movement.
The group’s study, which will be published in the Nov. 3 issue of Science, details how the device works and its potential applications. With top speed and performance, the transistor could open new frontiers in heat management of computer chips through an atomic-level design and molecular engineering. The advance could also further the understanding of how heat is regulated in the human body.
“The precision control of how heat flows through materials has been a long-held ...
Americans who have a tooth pulled or another painful dental procedure in the United States today are far less likely to get opioid painkillers than they were just a few years ago, a new study shows.
That’s good news, since research shows that opioids are not necessary for most dental procedures.
But the COVID-19 pandemic seems to have thrown a wrench into the effort to reduce opioid use in dental care – and not just in the few months after dentists and oral surgeons started providing routine care again after a pause in spring 2020.
The decline in opioid prescriptions filled by dental patients was much faster in the pre-pandemic ...
Francis Crick Institute press release
Under strict embargo: 18:00hrs GMT Thursday 2 November 2023
Peer reviewed
Experimental study
Animals
Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute and the Université Cote d’Azur, together with other labs in France and Switzerland, have identified a gene which is an early determining factor of ovary development in mice.
Typically, mice with XY sex chromosomes develop testes, and mice with XX chromosomes develop ovaries. Whether early gonads become ovaries or testes is due to cells either ...
The development of sex-specific characteristics is frequently seen in mammals. These characteristics stem from the activation of corresponding genetic programmes that until now have been largely undescribed by the scientific community. An international research team from the Center for Molecular Biology of Heidelberg University and The Francis Crick Institute in London has, for the first time, decoded the programmes that control the sex-specific development of major organs in selected mammals – humans, mice, rats, rabbits, and opossums. By comparing these programmes, the researchers were also able to trace the ...
Researchers led by Professor KANG Kisuk of the Center for Nanoparticle Research within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS), have announced a major breakthrough in the field of next-generation solid-state batteries. It is believed that their new findings will enable the creation of batteries based on a novel chloride-based solid electrolyte that exhibits exceptional ionic conductivity.
A pressing concern with current commercial batteries their reliance on liquid electrolytes, which leads to flammability ...
