Epigenetic Alterations Induced by Smoking and Their Intersection with Artificial Intelligence: A Narrative Review

Area of Science:

• Environmental epigenetics
• Genomics and molecular biology
• Public health and preventive medicine

Background:

• Cigarette smoking significantly increases global morbidity and mortality, with lasting adverse effects on respiratory health and the epigenome.
• Smoking's detrimental impact extends to offspring, causing multigenerational effects on respiratory health, including increased asthma/COPD risk and reduced lung function, even without direct exposure.
• Epigenetic modifications like DNA methylation and non-coding RNA regulation influence gene expression without altering DNA sequence, playing a role in smoking-related diseases.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review the latest research on how smoking affects gene regulation and chromatin structure.
• To emphasize how tobacco use increases vulnerability to multiple diseases through epigenetic mechanisms.
• To explore the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in understanding and predicting smoking-related health risks.

Main Methods:

• Narrative review synthesizing current research on smoking, epigenetics, and gene regulation.
• Analysis of high-throughput genomic and epigenomic data to identify molecular phenotypes.
• Examination of multigenerational effects of environmental exposures, including prenatal nicotine exposure.

Main Results:

• Environmental factors, including smoking, induce multigenerational changes in gene expression patterns.
• Epigenetic alterations persist long after smoking cessation and can be passed to offspring.
• AI is emerging as a critical tool for analyzing complex epigenomic data and developing predictive models for smoking-related diseases.

Conclusions:

• Epigenetics highlights the crucial role of environmental factors in disease development, challenging the notion of purely genetic inheritance.
• Future medical practice may involve personalized treatments based on an individual's unique epigenetic profile and environmental exposures.
• AI-driven research holds significant potential to transform medical and scientific practices by enabling earlier disease detection and prevention.