Linking emerging contaminants exposure to adverse health effects: Crosstalk between epigenome and environment

Abstract

Environmental epigenetic findings shed new light on the roles of epigenetic regulations in environmental exposure-induced toxicities or disease susceptibilities. Currently, environmental emerging contaminants (ECs) are in focus for further investigation due to the evidence of human exposure in addition to their environmental occurrences. However, the adverse effects of these environmental ECs on health through epigenetic mechanisms are still poorly addressed in many aspects. This review discusses the epigenetic mechanisms (DNA methylation, histone modifications, and microRNA expressions) linking ECs exposure to health outcomes. We emphasized on the recent literature describing how ECs can dysregulate epigenetic mechanisms and lead to downstream health outcomes. These up-to-date research outputs could provide novel insights into the toxicological mechanisms of ECs. However, the field still faces a demand for further studies on the broad spectrum of health effects, synergistic/antagonistic effects, transgenerational epigenetic effects, and epidemiologic and demographic data of ECs.

Keywords: DNA methylation; adverse health outcomes; environmental emerging contaminants; epigenetics; histone modifications; miRNA; toxicological mechanism.