El investigador de la Washington State University de Estados Unidos, Michael Skinner, ha demostrado que una gran variedad de productos tóxicos tiene efectos negativos no sólo en animales expuestos, sino también en la descendencia de éstos.
En concreto, Skinner ha constatado que tres generaciones subsiguientes pueden verse afectadas por el daño de estos tóxicos en uno de sus antepasados.
Según el científico, cuando un animal se ve expuesto a una sustancia tóxica, las secuencias de su ADN permanecen invariables pero se modifica la forma en que los genes se activan o se desactivan. Esta modificación es hereditaria.
El presente estudio es el primero que demuestra que una gran variedad de tóxicos –entre ellos los plásticos, el pesticida DEET o la permetrina, provocan enfermedades en varias generaciones. Anteriormente, Skinner había demostrado un efecto similar producido por un un fungicida concreto .
Los resultados obtenidos abren un nuevo campo de investigación acerca de los modos de desarrollo de las enfermedades.
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Epigenetics research continues
By Eric Sorensen, WSU science writer
PULLMAN, Wash. - A Washington State University researcher has demonstrated that a variety of environmental toxicants can have negative effects on not just an exposed animal but the next three generations of its offspring.
The animal’s DNA sequence remains unchanged, but the compounds change the way genes turn on and off - the epigenetic effect studied at length by WSU molecular biologistMichael Skinner and expanded on in the current issue of the online journal PLoS ONE.
While Skinner’s earlier research has shown similar effects from a pesticide and fungicide, this is the first to show a greater variety of toxicants - including jet fuel, dioxin, plastics and the pesticides DEET and permethrin - promoting epigenetic disease across generations.
"We didn't expect them all to have transgenerational effects, but all of them did," Skinner told the technology website Gizmodo. "I thought hydrocarbon would be negative but it was positive too.”
This tells researchers that the ability to promote transgenerational disease is "not simply a unique aspect for a unique compound” but a characteristic of many environmental compounds.
The field opens new ground in the study of how diseases develop. While toxicologists generally focus on animals exposed to a compound, Skinner’s work further demonstrates that diseases can also stem from older, ancestral exposures that are then mediated through epigenetic changes in sperm.
The work also points the way to identify and diagnose exposures through the use of specific epigenetic molecular markers.
"In the future we might be able to use these epigenetic biomarkers to determine your ancestral and personal exposure early in life and to predict your susceptibility to get a disease later in life,” Skinner said.
The study was funded by the U.S. Army to study pollutants that troops might be exposed to. Skinner and his colleagues exposed pregnant female rats to relatively high but non-lethal amounts of the compounds and tracked changes in three generations of offspring.
The researchers saw females reaching puberty earlier, increased rates in the decay and death of sperm cells and lower numbers of ovarian follicles that later become eggs. Future studies can use the molecular tools for risk assessment analysis.
The paper, "Transgenerational Actions of Environmental Compounds on Reproductive Disease and Identification of Epigenetic Biomarkers of Ancestral Exposures,” can be found here.
Contacts:Michael Skinner, Washington State University School of Biological Sciences, ,skinner@wsu.edu
Eric Sorensen, science writer, Washington State University, , ,eric.sorensen@wsu.edu
Eric Sorensen, science writer, Washington State University, , ,eric.sorensen@wsu.edu
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