In this insightful Q&A from the Wellness Academy, Janine LaSalle, PhD, a renowned researcher in medical microbiology and immunology, explores the fascinating role of genetics and epigenetics in health and mental well-being. Addressing audience questions, Dr. LaSalle sheds light on complex topics like intergenerational trauma, the role of lifestyle choices in shaping genetic expression, and the potential of new cancer screening technologies.
About the expert: Janine LaSalle, PhD
Janine LaSalle, PhD, is a distinguished researcher in the field of Medical Microbiology and Immunology at UC Davis. Her primary research interests lie in the intricate dynamics of nuclear organization, chromosome behavior, and DNA replication in mammalian cells. Dr. LaSalle is particularly focused on the molecular and cellular mechanisms of parental imprinting and the epigenetic variation of DNA methylation in human T cell clones, utilizing advanced techniques such as fluorescence microscopy and flow cytometry.
Q&A with Janine Lasalle, PhD
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Q: Can trauma or events experienced by our ancestors be passed down and affect our DNA?
Dr. LaSalle: This is defiantly an area of high interest in the mental health field, and I don’t think we can point to a single region on a chromosome yet that carries that inter-generational trauma. But I do think the field is open minded to this, and it could be traceable or discoverable with current methods.
And I think it is interesting. I know there have been some cohorts like pregnancies during a major disaster where they have followed up on the children, or some of this has been from the Holocaust survivors and their children, and grandchildren which have shown some connections to mental health. But again, as of right now, I we can’t point to a specific region on the chromosome that’s carrying that information. So the field is open minded, and there is a possibility that there could be an epigenetic mark that is carried on a chromosome through generations, but those have yet to be discovered.
Q: How do lifestyle choices like diet and exercise influence epigenetics, and is there a way to measure it?
Dr. LaSalle: Yeah, that’s a great question. I mean, I think honestly the best way you can measure is how it makes you feel. For example if you’re feeling healthier after you change an exercise or diet. Or even for me, I just went on a ten mile run this morning.
So yes, there are things you can do. Could you measure it? Possibly with something like the epigenetic tests or kit that are out there for biological epigenetic age. If you really want to you, and you’re the kind of person that wants quantification, like okay, I just changed my exercise and now I’m going to see how it looks in my blood. Then go ahead, try the test out. The only thing I would say is stick with the same test. And again, if you get a reading one time where it looks like you’re ten years older on your biological age, take that with a grain of salt in the same what you might look at a blood test from your doctor’s office the one time your cholesterol was really high. Which if it was a one time deal, it’s probably not a major concern.
So I think that these kinds of tests will get better, but if you’re debating whether to buy one of those kits, I’d say you’re better off spending the money on a gym membership or a basket of organic vegetables, or something along those lines.
I think those choices are better for your wellness that the kits, but they are pseudo quantifiable right now, and I think in the future that we will get better.
Q: Related to the tests, the gallery test for the cancer screening has been known to have issues with accuracy and lead to unnecessary follow-up testing. What are companies selling these test expected to provide in terms of data to help with accuracy and preventing unnecessary follow up?
Dr. LaSalle: Yeah. Great question. I think the challenge right now is in how these test are developed, as they usually are developed in patients that already have cancer, right?
They develop an algorithm based on the epigenetics of patients that have cancer versus those that don’t. So that’s great, but it doesn’t help you necessarily with can you predict it early on and have a better prediction accuracy for people who it’s just a screening test, so they don’t already know if they have cancer.
So is there a clear epigenetic signature if you have caner or not that’s accurate? That tells you at a really early stage before it’s picked up by other things? So that’s where I think the real problem could lie is that the now are going out into the general population, but again the people that sign up for the studies may not be at high risk.
One approach we’ve been thinking about is actually starting more at the exposure level. So people that have exposures that are known to promote cancer, again vulnerable populations. We are actually working now with firefighters in California who know they have a higher risk of cancer. So looking directly at a population like that and looking directly at their exposure, in a controlled way, could potentially be developing tests that are better at prediction at early stages because you’re starting at an exposure level and then looking to see if this predicts.
But I agree. The problem with a lot of medical testing is that you get false positives, right? And you can imagine, I think a lot of us have probably been through this for something like a mammogram screening or colorectal cancer. If you get a false positive, it’s an anxiety promoting thing to then go back and get a second test, and a lot of the times it’s fine.
So you really have to ask yourself, how much anxiety is this going to give me? Are you the kind of person that would rather have the information, even it it’s not 100% accurate? And I think that with cancer and things like that, it really is important to detect early. So I am willing to go through a false positive on a mammogram if it means that I know that I am preventing breast cancer, that kind of thing.
I would encourage anybody considering these tests to look at the clinical trials. All the clinical trials are available online through the government. You just search for clinicaltrails.gov and you can go and look at the evidence yourself and be cautious of companies that are overselling something.
If your doctor is recommending this, then that’s a bit more. But even then you may want to go in yourself and look at the evidence and ask those questions about what’s their false positive rate.
Q: Environmental exposures like toxins are a growing concern. Are there specific environmental factors that significantly impact our epigenetic expression? Are there any ways to measure and monitor that?
Dr. LaSalle: Well that is the goal. Is that can we come up with epigenetics for that. I have one graph of the exposures that is very overwhelming, but it’s so hard to measure exposures.
There are methods now using mass speculation that can try to get all of the chemicals in our blood, the epigenome has the potential to see that interface.
The things that are of concern to us are your air pollution and UC Davis is very interested in wildfire smoke exposure. Especially when you look at a map, and just over the past ten years living in California, in the Central Valley, we’ve been exposed to a large amount of wildfire smoke which is like air pollution on steroids. And the extreme amounts we get on those days is a concern a lot of us have because it’s kind of a new exposure.
Pesticides are also a concern in California. Again, people that live in the Central Valley, where they live and go to school are close to the fields, or they are working in the fields.
Our environmental Health Sciences Center her at Davis really thinks about anytime you have more than normal exposures and we love community engaged research. So if you have exposures that you are concerned about that are not being studied at Davis, let us know through at the Environmental Health Sciences Center.
Another concern is the consumer products that have been coming out. Especially for women and women of color, who sometimes end up with products higher in chemicals that are really harmful.
You have to ask yourself, what am I purchasing? Look at the labels. Is there a safer alternative? There are also populations who will have higher exposures like women that work in the nail salons because that is their job, and they breathe in chemicals all day.
These are all things we think about. Environmental exposures are important throughout your whole life, but at the stage of pregnancy and early infancy its the most critical, where it’s affecting your epigenome the most.
Q: Among lifestyle choices, how do things like sleep, diet, and exercise compare in their influence on epigenetics? Are some more impactful than others?
Dr. LaSalle: Yeah, everything in the body is connected together. when I first started out mostly working on the brain, cause we work with autism, but it’s the body, and the physiology is connected, for example sleep is connected to your appetite and we even work on circadian rhythms and epigenetics.
It is all really important, sleep, when you eat and how you eat, and what you eat, it’s all interconnected. And I think it’s ideal if you can work them together and again, start to feel you body. If you get better sleep, you might be more motivated to exercise, or you know, not have late snacks because your body is feeling healthier.
So I think I would just encourage people to listen to your body. There is something there. And also it’s a concept called introspection, which is the feeling of what’s going on inside your body. And a lot of it is unconscious, but you can consciously control your breathing rate, which is something you do to reduce stress. Or the awareness of when your stomach is not feeling well, and you question what you ate.
Just being aware of your breathing, your digestive system, and even your stress levels and trying to work within that to get a healthier overall body. To me there have been surprising science, well maybe not a surprise, your grandmother probably could have told you this, but how much the gut is connected to your brain, behavior, and how well you are feeling.
So i you have problems, if your gut microbiome is off or your diet is off, it can make you feel depressed or stressed or other ways. So there is a lot of connection, and the brain is not in a box separated away from other influences.
Q: Do you think genetics or epigenetics has a more significant impact on health?
Dr. LaSalle: There’s been a lot of analogies. One is that genetics is like the hardware, and then epigenetics it’s like the software. Or that genetics is like the words and epigenetics is like the grammar. So they’re both important, right? You wouldn’t have epigenetics without the genetics.
Obviously you can look at your family inheritance and you know that things are genetic just from that, and that families share a lot of culture and environment as well. So we can’t always ascribe things to the DNA code itself. So epigenetics really combines both nature and nurture.
And I think there is always the battle of nature versus nurture. You know, things like behavior, how much is genetic? How much is upbringing? As a epigeneticist, I like to say it’s nature AND nurture, and they are so intertwined you can’t separate them.
For example, when we look at things like the life expectancy in California or in the US. When you look at something like that you can say, yes zip code matters more than DNA code for at last something like life expectancy which is linked to health. And it’s striking that as scientists, as much as we think we can figure out everything with genetics, it’s still really important to also look at overall exposure as it’s important for general health and well-being.
View Dr. LaSalle’s full Wellness Academy session to learn more about epigenetics and wellness.
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