Epigenetic methylations and their connections with metabolism

Metabolic pathways play fundamental roles in several processes that regulate cell physiology and adaptation to environmental changes. Altered metabolic pathways predispose to several different pathologies ranging from diabetes to cancer. Specific transcriptional programs tightly regulate the enzymes involved in cell metabolism and dictate cell fate regulating the differentiation into specialized cell types that contribute to metabolic adaptation in higher organisms. For these reasons, it is of extreme importance to identify signaling pathways and transcription factors that positively and negatively regulate metabolism. Genomic organization allows a plethora of different strategies to regulate transcription. Importantly, large evidence suggests that the quality of diet and the caloric regimen can influence the epigenetic state of our genome and that certain metabolic pathways are also epigenetically controlled reveling a tight crosstalk between metabolism and epigenomes. Here we focus our attention on methylation-based epigenetic reactions, on how different metabolic pathways control these activities, and how these can influence metabolism. Altogether, the recent discoveries linking these apparent distant areas reveal that an exciting field of research is emerging.