Emerging evidence is shedding light on a large and complex network of epigenetic modifications at play in human stem cells. This "epigenetic landscape" governs the fine-tuning and precision of gene expression programs that define the molecular basis of stem cell pluripotency, differentiation and reprogramming. This review will focus on recent progress in our understanding of the processes that ...

Inheritance of acquired characteristics without changes in DNA sequence has been called transgenerational epigenetics. This review looks at studies that used the model system Caenorhabditis elegans to uncover mechanisms of transgenerational epigenetics in studies of RNA interference, studies of longevity, studies of germline continuity and a study on olfactory imprinting. In each case, research...

The 13th American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) Special Conference on Cancer Epigenetics was held in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on January 20-23, 2010. This event heralded insights arising from the large sequencing efforts within the NIH Epigenetics Roadmap Project and the Cancer Genome Atlas Project, as well as important new discoveries in the basic biology of epigenetics and results of ep...

EPIGENETICS: “The inheritance of patterns of DNAand RNA activity that do not depend on the naked nucleotide sequence. By “inheritance,” we mean a memory of such activity transmitted from one cell generation to the next (through mitosis).” Much of the current hype in epigenetics stems from the recognition of its role in human cancer. Yet, intriguingly, the first epigenetic change in human tumors...

We can now sequence and identify genome wide epigenetic patterns and perform a variety of "genomic experiments" within relatively short periods of time-ranging from days to weeks. Yet, despite these technological advances, we have a poor understanding of the inter-relationships between epigenetics, genome structure-function, and nutrition. Perhaps this limitation lies, in part, in our propensit...