Childhood environment influences epigenetic age and methylation concordance of a CpG clock locus in British-Bangladeshi migrants

Stöger, R., Choi, M., Begum, K., Leeman, G., Emes, R.D. ORCID: 0000-0001-6855-5481, Melamed, P. and Bentley, G.R., 2022. Childhood environment influences epigenetic age and methylation concordance of a CpG clock locus in British-Bangladeshi migrants. Epigenetics. ISSN 1559-2294

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Abstract

Migration from one location to another often comes with a change in environmental conditions. Here, we analysed features of DNA methylation in young, adult British-Bangladeshi women who experienced different environments during their childhoods: a) migrants, who grew up in Bangladesh with exposure to comparatively higher pathogen loads and poorer health care, and b) second-generation British-Bangladeshis, born to Bangladeshi parents, who grew up in the UK. We used buccal DNA to estimate DNA methylation-based age (DNAm age) from 14 migrants and 11 second-generation migrants, aged 18–35 years. ‘AgeAccel,’ a measure of DNAm age, independent of chronological age, showed that the group of women who spent their childhood in Bangladesh had higher AgeAccel (P = 0.028), compared to their UK peers. Since epigenetic clocks have been proposed to be associated with maintenance processes of epigenetic systems, we evaluated the preference for concordant DNA methylation at the luteinizing hormone/choriogonadotropin receptor (LHCGR/LHR) locus, which harbours one of the CpGs contributing to Horvath’s epigenetic clock. Measurements on both strands of individual, double-stranded DNA molecules indicate higher stability of DNA methylation states at this LHCGR/LHR locus in samples of women who grew up in Bangladesh. Together, our two independent analytical approaches imply that childhood environments may induce subtle changes that are detectable long after exposure occurred, which might reflect altered activity of the epigenetic maintenance system or a difference in the proportion of cell types in buccal tissue. This exploratory work supports our earlier findings that adverse childhood environments lead to phenotypic life history trade-offs.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Epigenetics
Creators:	Stöger, R., Choi, M., Begum, K., Leeman, G., Emes, R.D., Melamed, P. and Bentley, G.R.
Publisher:	Informa UK Limited
Date:	10 December 2022
ISSN:	1559-2294
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1080/15592294.2022.2153511 DOI 1655665 Other
Rights:	This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Divisions:	Professional Services > The Directorate
Record created by:	Jonathan Gallacher
Date Added:	07 Feb 2023 13:26
Last Modified:	07 Feb 2023 16:04
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/48184

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