Environmental toxicants such as toxic metals can alter epigenetic regulatory features such as DNA methylation, histone modification, and non-coding RNA expression. Heavy metals influence gene expression by epigenetic mechanisms and by directly binding to various metal response elements in the target gene promoters. Given the role of epigenetic alterations in regulating genes, there is potential...

Epigenetic mechanisms are essential for normal development and maintenance of tissue-specific gene expression patterns in mammals. Disruption of epigenetic processes can lead to altered gene function and malignant cellular transformation. Global changes in the epigenetic landscape are a hallmark of cancer. The initiation and progression of cancer, traditionally seen as a genetic disease, is now...

Classically, the development of cancer in humans has been viewed as a progressive, multistep process of transformation of normal cells into malignant cells driven by genetic alterations [1, 2]. However, a wealth of data in the past decade indicates that human cancer cells, in addition to a large number of genetic alterations, exhibit prominent epigenetic abnormalities, e.g. aberrant DNA methyla...

Epigenetic modifications help orchestrate sweeping developmental, aging, and disease-causing changes in phenotype by altering transcriptional activity in multiple genes spanning multiple biologic pathways. Although previous epigenetic research has focused primarily on dividing cells, particularly in cancer, recent studies have shown rapid, dynamic, and persistent epigenetic modifications in neu...

Epigenetic modifications are crucial for the identity and stability of cells, and, when aberrant, can lead to disease. During mouse development, the genome-wide epigenetic states of pre-implantation embryos and primordial germ cells (PGCs) undergo extensive reprogramming. An improved understanding of the epigenetic reprogramming mechanisms that occur in these cells should provide important new ...

The rapid expansion of epigenetics research is fueled by the increasing understanding that epigenetic processes are critical to regulating cellular development and dysfunction of epigenetic programs is responsible for a diverse set of human pathologies, including cancer, autoimmune and neurodegenerative diseases. The expansive set of components contributing to epigenetic disease mechanisms and ...

Mapping epigenetic modifications and identifying their roles in the regulation of spermatogenesis and embryogenesis are essential for gaining fundamental medical understandings and for clinical applications. More and more evidence has shown that specific epigenetic modifications are established during spermatogenesis, which will be transferred into oocyte via fertilisation, and play an importan...

DNA methylation is one of the essential epigenetic mechanisms that are closely correlated with the mechanisms underlying cell growth, differentiation and transformation in eukaryotes. Global changes in the epigenetic landscape are considered to be a hallmark of cancer. The initiation and progression of cancer are mediated through epigenetic modifications along with genetic alterations. Aberrant...

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is a malignancy with remarkable ethnic and geographic distribution in southern China and Southeast Asia. Alternative to genetic changes, aberrant epigenetic events disrupt multiple genes involved in cell signaling pathways through DNA methylation of promoter CpG islands and/or histone modifications. These epigenetic alterations grant cell growth advantage and cont...

Nutritional factors play a life-long role in human health. Indeed, there is growing evidence that one of the mechanisms by which nutrients and bioactive compounds affect metabolic traits is epigenetics. Complex interactions among food components and histone modifications, DNA methylation, non-coding RNA expression and chromatin remodeling factors lead to a dynamic regulation of gene expression ...