PS-4.1 Epigenetics of reproduction

Environment, epigenetics and reproduction

A conference summary of the third biannual Kenya Africa Conference "Environment, Epigenetics and Reproduction" is provided. A partial special Environmental Epigenetics issue containing a number of papers in Volume 3, Issue 3 and 4 are discussed.

The Prospects of Epigenetics in Neuroscience

Epigenetics and reproduction and the developmental origins of health and disease

Over the past century, studies of development and reproductive biology have transcended our understandings of what constitutes heritability and the acquisition of phenotypic traits from one generation to the next. While our early research defined “particulate genetic inheritance” as a primary mechanism for the heritability of traits, more recent work in past decades in lower eukaryotes and earl...

Nuclear Architecture and Epigenetics of Lineage Choice

Differentiation is an epigenetic process which is installed by changes of transcriptional programs over successive cellular divisions. A number of studies have reported the effects of biochemical modifications of chromatin (DNA and chromatin proteins) on the regulation of transcription. Although, these studies are able to explain how transcription of a given gene is regulated (toward activation...

Epigenetics in diagnosis of colorectal cancer

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a third most common epithelial carcinoma. CRC is known to develop from the early precancerous lesion to full blown malignancy via definite phases due to cumulative mutations and aberrant methylation of number of genes. The use of serum biomarkers that is non-invasive to discriminate cancer patients from healthy persons will prove to be an important tool to improve the...