What is epigenetics?

Epigenetics is the study of how behaviours and environment can causes changes in the way genes work.

All living things, or organisms, have a genome. We can think of the genome as a giant recipe book, it contains all the genetic information needed for an organism. For each part of an organism there is a specific recipe in the book in the form of DNA made up of genes. The genes in DNA are expressed when they are read and transcribed into RNA. The RNA is then translated into different proteins by structures called ribosomes. These proteins are the chief actors that drive the structure, function, and regulation of tissues and organs. Proteins can influence things like whether you are fat or thin, have diabetes or not, and even whether or not you get cancer. We can think of this process like baking a cake. In a perfect world you decide to make a cake, you get the recipe (DNA), you read it (RNA) and produce a lovely cake (proteins). But what happens if something is done differently? What if you spill coffee on the recipe or get distracted by a pet and can’t read it properly? You still get a cake but it’s not the cake you were trying to make. This is what happens when an epigenetic change occurs. Epigenetic changes can interfere with or boost the RNA translation process – how the recipe is read – changing the proteins produced and ultimately changing the health or appearance of the organism. The most common way this happens is that the DNA or proteins it is wrapped around are labelled with small chemical tags. One kind of tag, a methyl group, for example causes DNA methylation that can derail the translation machinery or cause the DNA to coil so tightly that it can’t be translated anymore – the recipe can no longer be read. The gene is still there but silenced. Boosting translation is essentially the opposite – professional pastry chef steps in to help make the cake – making the DNA easier to translate and ramping up production of the associated protein. All of these tags together within a cell are called an epigenome. Every organism as a unique epigenetic profile made up of these epigenomes based on their environment.

Why is this important?
More and more research is showing that epigenetic changes can be passed from parents to children and impact them in negative ways. Obesity is one of these ways and one which is a growing problem across the globe. We know that obesity is strongly heritable (meaning passed from parent to child) but we have also learned that there is only a small link to our actual genes. We think the heritability of obesity could be linked to epigenetic changes being passed from parents to children. Specifically, we think what we eat could cause epigenetic changes in sperm specifically, which are then passed on to children, making them more likely to be obese. With our research we are working to identify what kind of diet in parents can lead to obesity in offspring. Once we have figured this out, we hope to be able to provide dietary guidelines to parents to improve the health of future generations.

How are we doing this?
This is where GECKO comes in. GECKO, or Gametic Epigenetics Consortium against Obesity, is a consortium of researchers interested in nutrition, epigenetics inheritance and metabolic health. The GECKO is comprised of three leading research groups headed by Professor Romain Barrès at the University of Copenhagen, Professor Stephen Simpson at the University of Sydney and Professor Marcelo Nobrega at the University of Chicago. We are being funded from 2019 to 2025 by a Novo Nordisk Foundation Challenge grant and during this time we are focused on three main research areas.

GECKO is comprises of three key areas of exploration