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Vitamin D found to influence over 200 genes, highlighting links to disease
http://www.physorg.com/news201791554.html
August 23, 2010
The extent to which vitamin D deficiency may increase susceptibility
to a wide range of diseases is dramatically highlighted in research
published today. Scientists have mapped the points at which vitamin D
interacts with our DNA - and identified over two hundred genes that it
directly influences. The results are published today in the journal
Genome Research.
It is estimated that one billion people worldwide do not have
sufficient vitamin D. This deficiency is thought to be largely due to
insufficient exposure to the sun and in some cases to poor diet. As
well as being a well-known risk factor for rickets, there is a growing
body of evidence that vitamin D deficiency also increases an
individual's susceptibility to autoimmune conditions such as multiple
sclerosis (MS), rheumatoid arthritis and type 1 diabetes, as well as
certain cancers and even dementia.
Now, in a study whose funders include the Medical Research Council
(MRC), the MS Society, the Wellcome Trust and the MS Society of
Canada, researchers at the University of Oxford have shown the extent
to which vitamin D interacts with our DNA. They used new DNA
sequencing technology to create a map of vitamin D receptor binding
across the genome. The vitamin D receptor is a protein activated by
vitamin D, which attaches itself to DNA and thus influences what
proteins are made from our genetic code.
The researchers found 2,776 binding sites for the vitamin D receptor
along the length of the genome. These were unusually concentrated near
a number of genes associated with susceptibility to autoimmune
conditions such as MS, Crohn's disease, systemic lupus erythematosus
(or 'lupus') and rheumatoid arthritis, and to cancers such as chronic
lymphocytic leukaemia and colorectal cancer.
They also showed that vitamin D had a significant effect on the
activity of 229 genes including IRF8, previously associated with MS,
and PTPN2, associated with Crohn's disease and type 1 diabetes.
"Our study shows quite dramatically the wide-ranging influence that
vitamin D exerts over our health," says Dr Andreas Heger from the MRC
Functional Genomics Unit at Oxford, one of the lead authors of the
study.
The first author of the paper, Dr Sreeram Ramagopalan from the
Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, adds: "There is now evidence
supporting a role for vitamin D in susceptibility to a host of
diseases. Vitamin D supplements during pregnancy and the early years
could have a beneficial effect on a child's health in later life. Some
countries such as France have instituted this as a routine public
health measure."
The main source of vitamin D in the body comes from exposing the skin
to sunlight, although a diet of oily fish can provide some of the
vitamin. Research has previously suggested that lighter skin colour
and hair colour evolved in populations moving to parts of the globe
with less sun to optimise production of vitamin D in the body. A lack
of vitamin D can affect bone development, leading to rickets; in
pregnant mothers, poor bone health can be fatal to both mother and
child at birth, hence there are selective pressures in favour of
people who are able to produce adequate vitamin D.
This new study supports this hypothesis, having found a significant
number of vitamin D receptor binding sites in regions of the genome
with genetic changes more commonly found in people of European and
Asian descent. It is probable that skin lightening as we migrated out
of Africa resulted from the necessity to be able to make more vitamin
D and prevent rickets: vitamin D deficiency led to pelvic contraction
resulting in increased risk of fatality of both mother and unborn
child, effectively ending maternal lineages unable to find ways of
increasing availability of the vitamin.
"Vitamin D status is potentially one of the most powerful selective
pressures on the genome in relatively recent times," says Professor
George Ebers, Action Medical Research Professor of Clinical Neurology
and one of the senior authors of the paper. "Our study appears to
support this interpretation and it may be we have not had enough time
to make all the adaptations we have needed to cope with our northern
circumstances."
More information: Ramagopalan SV, Heger A, Berlanga AJ, Maugeri NJ,
Lincoln MR, Burrell A, Handunnetthi L, Handel AE, Disanto G, Orton S,
Watson CT, Morahan JM, Giovannoni G, Ponting CP, Ebers GC, Knight JC.
A ChIP-seq-defined genome-wide map of vitamin D receptor binding:
Associations with disease and evolution. Genome Res
doi:10.1101/gr.107920.110
Provided by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
"Ethics" is simply a last-gasp attempt by deist conservatives and
orthodox dogmatics to keep humanity in ignorance and obscurantism,
through the well tried fermentation of fear, the fear of science and
new technologies.
There is nothing glorious about what our ancestors call history,
it is simply a succession of mistakes, intolerances and violations.
On the contrary, let us embrace Science and the new technologies
unfettered, for it is these which will liberate mankind from the
myth of god, and free us from our age old fears, from disease,
death and the sweat of labour.
Rael
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