Alam Md Nur, Shapla Ummay Mahfuza, Shen Heqing, Huang Qingyu
Key Laboratory of Urban Environment and Health, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen, China.
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
J Appl Toxicol. 2021 Jun;41(6):878-897. doi: 10.1002/jat.4092. Epub 2020 Oct 28.
Environmental epigenetic findings shed new light on the roles of epigenetic regulations in environmental exposure-induced toxicities or disease susceptibilities. Currently, environmental emerging contaminants (ECs) are in focus for further investigation due to the evidence of human exposure in addition to their environmental occurrences. However, the adverse effects of these environmental ECs on health through epigenetic mechanisms are still poorly addressed in many aspects. This review discusses the epigenetic mechanisms (DNA methylation, histone modifications, and microRNA expressions) linking ECs exposure to health outcomes. We emphasized on the recent literature describing how ECs can dysregulate epigenetic mechanisms and lead to downstream health outcomes. These up-to-date research outputs could provide novel insights into the toxicological mechanisms of ECs. However, the field still faces a demand for further studies on the broad spectrum of health effects, synergistic/antagonistic effects, transgenerational epigenetic effects, and epidemiologic and demographic data of ECs.
环境表观遗传学研究结果为表观遗传调控在环境暴露诱导的毒性或疾病易感性中的作用提供了新的线索。目前，环境新兴污染物（ECs）因除了在环境中存在外还有人类接触的证据而成为进一步研究的重点。然而，这些环境ECs通过表观遗传机制对健康的不利影响在许多方面仍未得到充分探讨。本综述讨论了将ECs暴露与健康结果联系起来的表观遗传机制（DNA甲基化、组蛋白修饰和微小RNA表达）。我们着重介绍了最近的文献，这些文献描述了ECs如何失调表观遗传机制并导致下游健康结果。这些最新的研究成果可为ECs的毒理学机制提供新的见解。然而，该领域仍需要进一步研究ECs的广泛健康影响、协同/拮抗作用、跨代表观遗传效应以及流行病学和人口统计学数据。
