Central neuroregulatory machanisms between early life environment and glucose metabolism in adulthood / 中国实验动物学报

ABSTRACT

Traditionally it has been widely accepted that our genes together with adult lifestyle factors determine our risk of developing noncommunicable diseases such as type 2 diabetes mellitus ,cardiovascular disease and obesity in lat-er life.Currently, there is substantial evidence that the early life environment plays a key role in determining our suscepti -ble to such diseases in later life .As an increased focus on the understanding of central insulin resistance , central nerve sys-tem plays an extremely important role in regulating the peripheral glucose homeostasis .Substantial studies have indicated that it may be regulated by epigenetic mechanisms .Epigenetics can be defined as the study of heritable changes in gene ex-pression that do not involve alterations in the DNA sequence .Epigenetic processes play a central role in regulating tissue specific gene expression and hence alterations in these processes can induce long -term changes in gene expression and me-tabolism which persist throughout the lifecourse .This review will focus on the epigenetic machanisms of central neuroregula-tion between early life environment and glucose metabolism in adulthood .