Commentary: rapid steps forward in environmental epigenetics: implications for epidemiologic investigation of chronic disease.
Commentary: rapid steps forward in environmental epigenetics: implications for epidemiologic investigation of chronic disease.
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评论：环境表观遗传学的快速进展：对慢性病流行病学调查的影响。
DOI：
10.1093/ije/dys211
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发表时间：
2012
影响因子：
7.7
通讯作者：
Cortessis,VictoriaK
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Cortessis,VictoriaK
流行病学在很大程度上依赖于姐妹学科生物学来了解人类疾病的起源。这种依赖有两个重要作用。第一个是基本的和恒定的：在整个研究过程中，从制定和解决新问题到解释每一个新出现的结果，流行病学都关注生物学，问“什么是合理的？”第二种情况发生在生物学的发现导致可以用于流行病学研究的新方法时。这些发展使流行病学家能够将一个令人信服的假设带入科学研究领域，新的测量方法提供了一种测试假设预测的方法。流行病学家对放置在生物储存库中的样本的选择随着时间的推移而发生变化，说明新兴的生物测量方法如何将连续的假设带入流行病学研究范围。一旦可以测定特定独特型的抗体以测量对特定感染因子的暴露，则收集大量的人血清以解决这些因子与疾病相关的假设。在重组DNA时代成长起来的流行病学家惊奇地发现，有核细胞并没有常规地进入这些标本。这一代人创造了基因组DNA的集合，以测试遗传序列变异与数百种疾病风险增加相关的假设。这些DNA收集使用通过微创手段容易地收集的细胞作为DNA的来源，因为身体的有核细胞类型之间的序列是相当一致的。现在，对表观遗传状态的新测量方法--随细胞类型而变化--正在促使收集直接参与疾病过程的组织。[1]这些措施来自表观遗传学，这是一门生物学学科，研究DNA核苷酸序列以外的稳定分子特征影响基因表达的过程。2
Epidemiology relies heavily on a sister discipline, biology, to understand origins of human disease. This reliance serves two important functions. The first is fundamental and constant: over the entire arc of the research process, from formulating and addressing new questions to interpreting each emerging result, epidemiology looks to biology, asking ‘What is plausible?’The second occurs when discoveries in biology lead to new measures that can be employed in epidemiologic research. These developments enable epidemiologists to move a compelling hypothesis into the realm of scientific enquiry, when new measures provide a means of testing hypothetical predictions.The choices epidemiologists have made regarding samples to place in bio-repositories have changed over time, illustrating how emerging biological measures brought successive sets of hypotheses within reach of epidemiologic research. Once antibodies of specific idiotype could be assayed to measure exposure to specific infectious agents, large collections of human sera were assembled to address hypotheses relating these agents to disease. Epidemiologists who came of age in the era of recombinant DNA marvel that nucleated cells did not routinely enter these collections. This generation created collections of genomic DNA to test hypotheses relating inherited sequence variants to the increased risk of hundreds of diseases. These DNA collections used cells readily collected by minimally invasive means as the source of DNA, since sequence is quite uniform between nucleated cell types of the body. Now, newer measures of epigenetic state—which varies with cell type—are motivating collection of tissues directly involved in disease processes. 1 These measures have emerged from epigenetics, the biological discipline addressing processes whereby stable molecular characteristics other than DNA nucleotide sequence influence gene expression. 2