Health-promoting role of dietary bioactive compounds through epigenetic modulations: a novel prophylactic and therapeutic approach

Abstract

The epigenome is an overall epigenetic state of an organism, which is as important as that of the genome for normal development and functioning of an individual. Epigenetics involves heritable but reversible changes in gene expression through alterations in DNA methylation, histone modifications and regulation of non-coding RNAs in cells, without any change in the DNA sequence. Epigenetic changes are owned by various environmental factors including pollution, microbiota and diet, which have profound effects on epigenetic modifiers. The bioactive compounds present in the diet mainly include curcumin, resveratrol, catechins, quercetin, genistein, sulforaphane, epigallocatechin-3-gallate, alkaloids, vitamins, and peptides. Bioactive compounds released during fermentation by the action of microbes also have a significant effect on the host epigenome. Besides, recent studies have explored the new insights in vitamin’s functions through epigenetic regulation. These bioactive compounds exert synergistic, preventive and therapeutic effects when combined as well as when used with chemotherapeutic agents. Therefore, these compounds have potential of therapeutic agents that could be used as “Epidrug” to treat many inflammatory diseases and various cancers where chemotherapy results have many side effects. In this review, the effect of diet derived bioactive compounds through epigenetic modulations on in vitro and in vivo models is discussed.

Keywords:

• Bioactive compounds
• bioactive peptides
• epigenetic modifiers
• miRNA

Acknowledgements

The authors are thankful to the ICAR-National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI), Karnal and Institutional Development Plan (IDP) under National Agricultural Higher Education Project (NAHEP), Indian Council of Agricultural Research, New Delhi, India for providing library services, financial support and other facilities. Authors are very thankful to Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), New Delhi, India for the award of Junior Research Fellowship to Ankita Kumari (No. 3/1/3/JRF-2016/-2016/SS/HRD-09(10520)) and Shalaka Bhawal (3/1/3/JRF-2017/HRD-LS/50500/23).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).