epigenetics
5 stories tagged "epigenetics"
Your Immune Cells Remember Obesity for Up to a Decade After the Weight Comes Off
CD4 T cells hold chemical marks of past obesity for an estimated five to ten years, which may help explain why the risk for diabetes and some cancers can linger long after the scale reads normal.
Brain & AgingIn Mice, Early-Life Stress Writes a Molecular Mark Onto the Brain's Reward Neurons. Turn One Enzyme Down, and It Never Sets
Early-life stress raises an enzyme called SETD7 in the brain's dopamine neurons, loosening the DNA around stress genes so they fire too easily into adulthood. When researchers blocked it in mice, the stressed animals did not develop the same anxiety-like stress sensitivity, and stayed as social and
Autoimmune & InflammationWhy Anti-TNF Keeps Failing So Many Crohn's Patients: The Drug Never Reached the Cell Holding the Disease Open
Anti-TNF biologics have muzzled the immune system for 25 years, and up to 46 percent of Crohn's patients still fail them. A single-cell atlas points at the structural cells of the gut wall, epigenetically rewired into a state the drugs were never built to reach.
Metabolic & WeightYour Fat Cells Remember Being Fat, and That Memory Outlasts the Weight Loss
Your body defends its heaviest weight for years after you lose it, which is why the rebound isn't weak willpower and why the injection only works while you keep paying for it.
CancerWhether a T Cell Keeps Killing Cancer or Quits Is Written in How Its Genome Folds
Exhausted CD8 T cells are why checkpoint drugs and CAR-T so often stall. New maps of the 3D genome show their fate is set by how the DNA is physically folded, and by CTCF, the protein that does the folding.