It’s Not Just Genes: Scientists Discover the Real Reason Some People Get Sicker Than Others
Money Talks News • • health
Key Points:
- Researchers at the Salk Institute have discovered that past infections and environmental exposures leave "epigenetic fingerprints" on immune cells, fundamentally altering how the body responds to future threats.
- The study, published in Nature Genetics, shows that immune response variability is influenced not just by inherited genes but also by experience-driven chemical modifications to DNA called the epigenome.
- By analyzing immune cells from 110 donors with diverse medical histories, scientists distinguished between inherited immune traits and those shaped by life experiences, finding that experience-related changes occur in flexible regulatory genome regions.
- This discovery explains why genetically identical individuals, such as twins, can develop different immune responses over time and opens the door to personalized medicine approaches based on epigenetic history.
