Genetics

Decoding the language of epigenetic modifications

Epigenetic changes play important roles in cancer, metabolic and aging-related diseases, but also during loss of resilience as they cause the genetic material to be incorrectly interpreted in affected cells. A major study ...

Immunology

Review discusses metabolic reprogramming of T cells

When foreign antigens trigger an immune response, T cells respond by proliferating and differentiating into two groups—effector and memory cells. Epigenetic and transcriptional pathways mediate this response, but the cells ...

Oncology & Cancer

Researchers reveal mechanism of drug reactivating tumor suppressors

Researchers have revealed the mechanism of a drug shown to be effective in treating certain types of cancer, which targets a protein modification silencing the expression of multiple tumor suppressor genes. They also demonstrated ...

Neuroscience

Immune genes are altered in Alzheimer's patients' blood

A new Northwestern Medicine study has found the immune system in the blood of Alzheimer's patients is epigenetically altered. That means the patients' behavior or environment has caused changes that affect the way their genes ...

Oncology & Cancer

Biomarkers discovered for difficult-to-diagnose breast tumor

The epigenetic 'signature' of a rare, hard-to-diagnose breast tumor has been found by scientists at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research. The discovery could lead to improved treatment guidelines and better outcomes for ...

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Epigenetics

In biology, and specifically genetics, epigenetics is the study of heritable changes in gene expression or cellular phenotype caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence – hence the name epi- (Greek: επί- over, above, outer) -genetics. Examples of such changes might be DNA methylation or histone deacetylation, both of which serve to suppress gene expression without altering the sequence of the silenced genes. In 2011, it was demonstrated that the methylation of mRNA has a critical role in human energy homeostasis. This opened the field of RNA epigenetics.

These changes may remain through cell divisions for the remainder of the cell's life and may also last for multiple generations. However, there is no change in the underlying DNA sequence of the organism; instead, non-genetic factors cause the organism's genes to behave (or "express themselves") differently.

One example of epigenetic changes in eukaryotic biology is the process of cellular differentiation. During morphogenesis, totipotent stem cells become the various pluripotent cell lines of the embryo which in turn become fully differentiated cells. In other words, a single fertilized egg cell – the zygote – changes into the many cell types including neurons, muscle cells, epithelium, endothelium of blood vessels etc. as it continues to divide. It does so by activating some genes while inhibiting others.

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