Zaina Silvio, Lund Gertrud
Department of Medical Sciences, Division of Health Sciences, León Campus, University of Guanajuato, León, Mexico.
J Nutrigenet Nutrigenomics. 2011;4(5):261-74. doi: 10.1159/000334584. Epub 2012 Feb 22.
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a leading cause of mortality and is projected to hold its grim record as developing countries increase their wealth. Since specific nutritional habits are important risk factors for CVD, it is imperative to understand how ingredients of risk-associated diets convert a healthy cellular transcriptional program into a pathological one. Epigenetics has enriched our view of the genome by showing that DNA-associated regulatory proteins and RNAs, together with chemical modifications of the DNA itself, determine which parts of the DNA chain are transcribed or silent in a given phase of a cell's life. This complex biological entity--the epigenome--accounts for the enormous phenotypic diversity within a multicellular organism despite its unicellular origin. Crucially, the epigenome can be modified by diet and other exogenous factors, thus suggesting that epigenetic mechanisms might underlie pathological responses to CVD risk factors. Here, we will review the current knowledge of epigenetic mechanisms in diet-gene interactions and propose ways in which epigenetics might clarify the impact of genetic variants on CVD risk.
心血管疾病（CVD）是主要的死亡原因，并且预计随着发展中国家财富的增加，其严峻形势仍将持续。由于特定的营养习惯是心血管疾病的重要风险因素，因此必须了解与风险相关的饮食成分如何将健康的细胞转录程序转变为病理程序。表观遗传学通过表明与DNA相关的调节蛋白和RNA以及DNA本身的化学修饰决定了DNA链的哪些部分在细胞生命的特定阶段被转录或沉默，丰富了我们对基因组的认识。这个复杂的生物实体——表观基因组——解释了多细胞生物中尽管起源于单细胞但仍存在的巨大表型多样性。至关重要的是，表观基因组可以被饮食和其他外部因素修饰，因此表明表观遗传机制可能是对心血管疾病风险因素的病理反应的基础。在这里，我们将综述饮食与基因相互作用中表观遗传机制的现有知识，并提出表观遗传学可能阐明基因变异对心血管疾病风险影响的方式。
