Child Abuse and Adult Suicide: a Similarity?

The DNA we inherit from our parents is located in all of our cells and remains unchanged during our lives; changes in gene functions can have detrimental effects on behaviour. Epigenetics is a field within biology that focuses on these functional changes, that don’t require changes in actual gene sequence. Epigeneticists from The Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics at McGill University, Quebec, recently published their results on the affects of environmental factors on the genes in brains of suicide victims. Leader of the research project Moshe Syzfa claims “the study highlighted real differences between the brains of men who committed suicide and the brains of men who did not”.

The study found that although the genetic sequence was the same, the epigenetic markings differed. There appeared to be a chemical coating on the genes of the 13 suicide victims studied, all of which had been victims of child abuse earlier in their lives. It is currently understood that during pregnancy a chemical coating called ‘DNA Methylation’ creates marks in our DNA that instruct it to express certain genes. These marks are relatively sensitive and can easily be affected by our environment in early childhood (see DNA Methylation for more details); hence "it's possible the changes in epigenetic markers were caused by the exposure to childhood abuse” (Syzfa, 2008) and are not inherited.

In completing the study, the researcher’s analysed a set of genes that code for ribosomal RNA (rRNA) as the creation of proteins can be regulated epigenetically. The translation of certain proteins is essential for many motor processes such as learning, memory and decision-making, particularly in early childhood. If these proteins are not coded for or if mutations occur at this stage in one’s lifecycle, the effects could cause a lack of neural connections and thus, individual differences in the risk of suicide.

With epigenetic studies such as this identifying the causing agent of suicidal issues, the focus is now turning to whether scientists can detect changes in blood DNA and therefore develop interventions to erase these differences soon after diagnosis.

For full article see: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/106639.php

For more information: http://www.livescience.com/health/080506-suicide-epigenetics.html

http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20080406232345data_trunc_sys.shtml