ABSTRACT
The epigenetic regulation of the genome has evolved to bridge the gap between nature and nurture. Conrad Hal Waddington (1905-1975) was the person who coined the term “epigenetics” in 1942 while working with Honor B. Fell at the Strangeways Research Laboratory on cytonuclear interactions. Waddington’s epigenetic landscape is a metaphor for how gene silencing or gene activation modulates development (Goldberg et al. 2007). The concept of Waddington’s epigenetic landscape as described by his colleague Ralph Waldo Emerson is quite interesting:
[A] small tortuous pass Winding through grassy shallows in and out, Two creeping miles of rushes, pads, and sponge … Northward the length of Follansbee we rowed, Under low mountains, whose unbroken ridge Ponderous with beechen forest sloped the shore. A pause and council: then, where near the head On the east a bay makes inward to the land between two rocky arms, we climb the bank. (Agassiz, 1869)
2.1 Introduction .................................................................................................... 13 2.1.1 Epigenetics and Human Disease ......................................................... 13 2.1.2 Epigenetics in Nutritional Science ...................................................... 15 2.1.3 Shaping Life with Epigenetics ............................................................ 15 2.1.4 List of Dietary Chemicals ................................................................... 16
2.2 Epigenetic Regulation of Aging ...................................................................... 17 2.2.1 Epigenetic Changes ............................................................................. 17 2.2.2 Gene Silencing or Gene Activation ....................................................20
