Epigenetics: A Molecular Link Between Environmental Factors and Type 2 Diabetes

A lthough obesity, reduced physical activity, andaging increase susceptibility to type 2 diabetes,many people exposed to these risk factors donot develop the disease. Recent genome-wide association studies have identified a number of genetic variants that explain some of the interindividual variation in diabetes susceptibility (1–5). There is also a growing body of literature suggesting a role for epigenetic factors in the complex interplay between genes and the environ-ment. Nevertheless, our knowledge about the molecular mechanisms linking environmental factors and type 2 diabetes still remains limited. This perspective will pro-vide some insights into epigenetic mechanisms associated with type 2 diabetes. An overview of epigenetic regulation. Although there is no uniform definition of epigenetics, it has been de-scribed as heritable changes in gene function that occur without a change in the nucleotide sequence (6). Epige-