histone methylation

Parents’ mutations, even if they’re not inherited by offspring, could affect subsequent generations through changes to epigenetic marks, a study finds.

In mice, epigenetic marks made on histones during infancy influence depression-like behavior during adulthood. A drug that reverses the genomic tags appears to undo the damage.

Mouse fathers whose sperm lacks the gene Kdm6a pass down altered methylation patterns to male offspring, along with a better chance of developing tumors and dying.

Unlike animals, plants stably pass on their DNA methylomes from one generation to the next. The resulting gene silencing likely hides an abundance of phenotypic variation.

Multiple molecular mechanisms keep plant DNA methylation in order.

Histones stored on lipid droplets in fly embryos provide a backup supply when newly synthesized ones are lacking.

Long non-protein-coding RNA (lncRNA) sequences are often transcribed from the opposite, or antisense, strand of a protein coding gene. In the past few years, research has shown that these lncRNAs play a number of regulatory roles in the cell. For exa

For the first time researchers have shown that epigenetic changes that increase lifespan can be inherited across multiple generations.

Testing a central tenet of epigenetic regulation

There are many ways that epigenetic effects regulate the activation or repression of genes. Here are a few molecular tricks cells use to read off the right genetic program.

Epigenetic events regulate the activities of genes without changing the DNA sequence. Different genes are expressed depending on the methyl-marks attached to DNA itself and by changes in the structure and/or composition of chromatin.