Your Aging Epigenome
From ScienceDaily: researchers have confirmed that "epigenetic marks on DNA - chemical marks other than the DNA sequence - do indeed change over a person's lifetime, and that the degree of change is similar among family members. The team suggests that overall genome health is heritable and that epigenetic changes occurring over one's lifetime may explain why disease susceptibility increases with age." Alternately, and more likely in my opinion, epigenetic changes are cellular responses to an increasing level of biochemical damage and damage-induced changes in the operation of bodily systems. We should expect to see epigenetic changes when anything relating to the body is changed, all the way from diet and exercise to immune system aging or accumulation of amyloid between cells, and everything in between. Still, research is at its earliest stages, and any hint of correlations in epigenetic changes across larger populations is intriguing.
Link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080624174849.htm