How Toxins May Affect Epigenetics through Multiple Generations

In animals, drug-related epigenetic changes in fathers have also been shown to negatively affect offspring in terms of poorer spatial working memory, decreased attention and decreased cerebral volume. We already know that the life experiences of our mothers and fathers can influence the epigenetics in their children. Epigenetics may also be ‘remembered’ through the phenomena known as transgenerational inheritance; so the pesticides your great-granddad may have consumed could actually have influenced your epigenetics.

Environmental Toxins and Chemicals

In-vitro, animal, and human investigations have identified several classes of environmental chemicals that modify epigenetic marks, including metals (cadmium, arsenic, nickel, chromium, methylmercury), peroxisome proliferators (trichloroethylene, dichloroacetic acid, trichloroacetic acid), air pollutants (particulate matter, black carbon, benzene), and endocrine-disrupting/reproductive toxicants (diethylstilbestrol, bisphenol A, persistent organic pollutants, dioxin). Most studies conducted so far have been centered on DNA methylation, whereas only a few investigations have studied environmental chemicals in relation to histone modications and miRNA.

To provide a bit of background, epigenetic transgenerational inheritance is the concept that epigenetic modifications can be inherited from generation to generation to generation and so on. There is currently a large debate in the field as to precisely what epigenetic modifications can be inherited and if these pass down to the third generation. The group found that a whole slew of epigenetic modifications change as a result of DDT exposure in mice across three generations. Having already demonstrated that DDT exposure can promote the inheritance of obesity, Skinner and his colleagues looked into this further by analysing a wide array of epigenetic modifications across the entire genome. In animals, drug-related epigenetic changes in fathers have also been shown to negatively affect offspring in terms of poorer spatial working memory, decreased attention and decreased cerebral volume.