A new study suggests that acute psychological stress, which is known to increase the risk of physical and mental illness, may do so by altering the control of genes.
A report on the study, thought to be the first to show that stress alters the methylation of DNA and thus the activity of certain genes, appeared online in the journalTranslational Psychiatry on 14 August.
Researchers from the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB), together with colleagues from Basel, Trier and London, looked at gene segments that are known to be involved with the control of biological stress.
One of the most important discoveries in genetics is epigenetics, or the "second code" that regulates gene activity.
Research is beginning to show that epigenetic changes could be involved in the development of some chronic diseases such as cancer or depression.
While the genome, the genetic code or DNA, for making a human being is more or less fixed once the sperm fertilizes the egg, it is the epigenome that decides how the blueprint is interpreted.
Think of the genome as being the construction manual for making all the proteins the body needs, and the epigenome as the construction or maintenance guy reading the manual: sometimes he will have off days when he is tired and makes mistakes, or just interprets the instructions differently.
Cells function by making proteins. Which proteins they produce depends on the cell type, which is set by genes, and the environment, which influences how the epigenome reads the genes. One way this happens is via methyl groups (CH3) that attach to sections of DNA: these can remain in place for quite a while, even after the cell divides.
Previous studies have shown that psychological trauma in early life and highly stressful events are associated with long-term methylation changes to DNA.
But what the researchers in this study wanted to find out was whether this also happens after acute psychological stress: for instance such as that experienced during a job interview.
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