The Janus face of DNA methylation in aging

摘要: Aging is arguably the most familiar yet least-well understood aspect of human biology. The role epigenetics in aging and age-related diseases has gained interest given recent advances understanding how epigenetic mechanisms mediate interactions between environment genetic blueprint. While current concepts generally view global deteriorations marks to insidiously impair cellular molecular functions, an active for changes so far received little attention. In this regard, we have recently shown that early-life adversity induced specific DNA methylation were protected from age-associated erasure correlated with a phenotype well-known increase risk mental disorders. This finding strengthens idea (de-)methylation controlled by multiple might fulfill different, partly contrasting, roles process.