Betaine, A Potent Mediator of Metabolic Programming?

Abstract

Metabolic programming is described as the long-lasting impacts that the antenatal environment exerts on the biological functions and health outcomes of an individual organism in later life. The potential role of betaine as a mediator of metabolic programming has garnered much more attention recently. Betaine, or trimethylglycine, is a bioactive product present in a variety of foods such as wheat, spinach, sugar beets and seafood. It can also be derived from the oxidation of choline, a semi-essential nutrient. Betaine serves as a major osmolyte and methyl donor in the body. To serve as a methyl donor, betaine donates one of its labile methyl groups to homocysteine, which remethylates homocysteine to methionine. After methionine is converted to the universal methyl donor S-adenosylmethionine, the betainederived methyl group is used for methylation reactions such as DNA and histone methylation [1]. DNA and histone methylating reactions are major epigenetic events, which produce heritable changes in gene expression without altering DNA sequence. As epigenetics is considered as the cornerstone mechanism by which prenatal nutrition exerts its lasting influence on offspring health, betaine is speculated to affect the process of metabolic programming by serving as an epigenetic modifier.