Abstract
If the transmission of biological information from one generation to the next is based on DNA, most heritable phenotypic traits such as chronic metabolic diseases, are not linked to genetic variation in DNA sequences. Non-genetic heritability might have several causes including epigenetic, parental effect, adaptive social learning, and influence of the ecological environment. Distinguishing among these causes is crucial to resolve major phenotypic enigmas. Strong evidence indicates that changes in DNA expression through various epigenetic mechanisms can be linked to parent-offspring resemblance in terms of sensitivity to metabolic diseases. Among non-genetic heritable traits, early nutrition could account for a long term deviant programming of genes expression responsible for metabolic diseases in adulthood. Nutrition could shape an inadequate gut microbiota (dysbiosis), triggering epigenetic deregulation of transcription which can be observed in chronic metabolic diseases. We review herein the evidence that dysbiosis might be a major cause of heritable epigenetic patterns found to be associated with metabolic diseases. By taking into account the recent advances on the gut microbiome, we have aggregated together different observations supporting the hypothesis that the gut microbiota could promote the molecular crosstalk between bacteria and surrounding host cells which controls the pathological epigenetic signature. We introduce for the first time the concept of “microbiological memory” as the main regulator of the epigenetic signatures, thereby indicating that different causes of non-genetic heritability can interact in complex pathways to produce inheritance.
Highlights
Reviewed by: Aaron Lerner, AESKU.KIPP Institute, Germany Miguel Gueimonde, Instituto de Productos Lácteos de Asturias (IPLA), Spain
We introduce for the first time the concept of “microbiological memory” as the main regulator of the epigenetic signatures, thereby indicating that different causes of non-genetic heritability can interact in complex pathways to produce inheritance
Epigenetic Signature Under the Control of Microbiota only the DNA sequence is inherited across generations, data issued from genome-wide association (GWA) studies have shown that the most common human diseases transmitted by parents to their offspring, could not be explained by common genetic variants (Maher, 2008)
Summary
Microbiologists have been convinced that our microbiota shapes gene expression. We are at the very first phase of discovery of mechanisms that lead bacterial species to alter expression of eukaryotic genes of the host and trigger metabolic diseases Entering deeper into these multifactorial mechanisms could consist in investigating the molecular crosstalk between the microbiota and hosts cells. Bacteria concentrations range from 101–103 per gram to 1010–1011 per gram in the upper intestines and colon respectively, and they reach their highest biomass in the distal gut (Hooper et al, 2001; Gill et al, 2006; Hugon et al, 2013) They are essential to physiological metabolic processes such as digestion and absorption of nutriments (Figure 2). The number of scientific reports indicating that patients with metabolic diseases exhibit a particular epigenetic signature is steadily increasing These data are opening new avenues for the investigation of relationships between microbiota and epigenetic programming in health and disease. LESSONS FROM CLINICS AND ANIMAL MODELS: EVIDENCE OF LINKS BETWEEN GUT MICROBIOTA AND METABOLIC DISEASES
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