Epigenetics and its essence in understanding human growth, development and disease

Abstract

Epigenetics is a scientific discipline encompassing the genetic and non-genetic related perspectives of heritable phenotypic modifications of whose aetiologies include behavioural, anthropogenic, environmental, metabolic and spatiotemporal variables. Behavioral epigenetics examines how epigenetics shapes animal and human behaviour to explicate how nurture moulds nature; nature prefers to biological heredity and nurture prefers to occurrrences in the environment and hereditary during the lifespan of all individuals. Behavioural epigenetics features how experiences and the environment produce individual disparities in behaviour, cognition, personality, and mental health influence gene expression. Epigenetic gene regulation relates to modification of DNA sequence and histones as well as DNA methylation. These epigenetic alterations effect the growth of neurons in the developing brain and functional modification of neurons in the developed brain, with resultant significant alterations in neuron morphology. Epigenetic changes occur in the developing fetus and throughout the lifespan of an individual, with alterations in individual traits and transgenerational inheritance. Epigenetics is associated with heritable changes in gene actions and these are not due to DNA sequence alterations. Epigenetics may be termed sustained, long-run changes in the transcription veracity of a heritable or non-heritable cell. DNA methylation and histone alteration are mechanisms which modify gene expression without changing the underlying DNA sequence. Gene expression is driven by repressor protein actions which bind to DNA silencer regions.DNA methylation turns a gene ''off'' culminating in genetic information impairment to be read from DNA, but extricating the methyl tag can turn ''on'' the gene. Histone alteration defines the packaging of DNA into the chromosomes; and.these changes influence gene expression. This review provides the latitude to examine the extant information in the universal characterizations of epigenetic formulations, such as ageing, susceptibility to pollutant and irritant exposure.