Chunk #22 — Introduction — 1. Epigenetic Regulation due to Histone Covalent Modifications — 1D. Alcohol and Histone Acetylation and Deacetylation Mechanisms in Non-neuronal Tissues
Histone covalent modifications have been implicated in alcohol phenotypes in peripheral tissues as well (Kim & Shukla, 2006). H3K9 acetylation was found to be increased in the liver of rats that had intra-gastric administration of ethanol (Kim & Shukla, 2006). Ethanol was shown to increase histone H3K9 acetylation in a dose and time-dependent manner in primary cultures of hepatocytes, without affecting H3K14 acetylation, demonstrating the specificity of ethanol in regulating covalent modifications to histone proteins. TSA administration was able to mimic ethanol’s effects on hepatocytes (Park, Miller, & Shukla, 2003). However, chronic ethanol treatment did not change global H3K9 acetylation, but did result in an increase in H3K9 acetylation in the promoter and coding regions of the alcohol dehydrogenase 1 gene (Park, Lim, & Shukla, 2012).
