Nutchanon Boonchaiseree 5861085

Epigenetics: Asthma and Air Pollution

Question:

What kind of environment that trigger the asthma?

Background:

Epigenetics is the study of change in gene expression in living organisms instead of

modification of the genetic code, although, this does not cause entirely DNA sequence to

changes. Epigenetic also play the role in asthma that is heritable. Change of Epigenetics is the

natural phenomenon. On the other hand, epigenetics is also influence by other factors for

example health condition, surrounding environment, diet, and etc. Epigenetics modification

causes each cell to provide a different function for human body. But, it can also cause the

negative effects result like abnormal symptoms as an example.

Asthma is a complex heritable disease that influences the respiratory system cause by

the abnormality of the chromosome 5, 6, 11, 14, and 12. The characteristic of people that

have asthma is that these people will have an inflammation of airway in respiratory system

which causes coughing, shortness of breath, and chest tightness to occur. This disease affects

every people and every age in both male and female. This disease controlled by the gene

ORMDL3 and GSDML. In this experiment will find the cause that trigger the asthma

disease.

Hypothesis:

If the person that have an asthma gene living in the area with high amount of air

pollution, then the asthma gene in that person will be trigger.

Nutchanon Boonchaiseree 5861085

Experiment: Part1:

1 Look for 50 male that are Thai people by go to the medical places and announce to

the people by posting the brochure and give to the people in the hospitals, clinics, and

other medical stations. Also announce on the social media. All of them should have

their family members that have asthma disease in their gene. However, the half of

amount of participant should have asthma trigger.

2 Separate amount of men into half. Which the first halves of the men will not living

in the high air pollution area, the other half live in high air pollution area.

3 Hand out the survey to the men, which in the survey the questions will ask them

about their family members that have asthma and where they live.

Part 2:

1. Searching and identify for matches.

2 See that how many men that living in the area that have high air pollution get

asthma.

3 Observe at the survey and then plot the result on the graph to compare the men that

living in the area that have less air pollution.

Survey:

Surname: First Name:

Nationality: Age:

Family members with asthma (ex. Father, Grandfather):

Air Quality in current living area:

Variables:
Nutchanon Boonchaiseree 5861085

1 Independent Variable: Amount of air pollution in an area that people living.

2 Dependent Variable: People that contain asthma gene.

Implication:

To identify the trigger of asthma disease in human gene.

References:

Asthma. (2016, October 11). Retrieved from National Institute of Environment Health

Sciences: http://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/conditions/asthma/

Asthma. (n.d.). Retrieved from National Center for Biotechnology Information:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK22181/

Ivana V. Yang, D. A. (2012 , September 29). Epigenetic Mechanisms and the Development of

Asthma. Retrieved from National Center for Biotechnology Information:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3518374/#