干细胞心肌分化的表观遗传学机制

摘要

表观遗传学是一门新兴的遗传学分支,研究细胞核内DNA序列没有改变的情况下,基因功能的可逆的、可遗传的改变.表观遗传学调控机制涉及DNA甲基化、组蛋白翻译后修饰、染色质重塑和微小RNA调控等领域.有研究表明干细胞心肌分化过程中伴随着表观遗传学的改变,促进干细胞表观遗传修饰发生改变的药物可以诱导干细胞心肌分化,表现遗传学机制已成为目前研究干细胞心肌分化机制的热点,为干细胞在发育生物学、遗传学和再生医学等领域的应用提供了新的理论依据和手段.%Epigenetics is a new branch of genetics which studies reversible and heritable changes of gene function that do not involve alterations in DNA sequence of nucleus. The epigenetic mechanism includes DNA methylation, post-translational histone modification, chromatin remodeling, microRNA regulation and so on. Some investigations have shown that epigenetic phenomena changes occur in the cardiac differentiation of stem cells. Drugs causing epigenetic modifications have been shown to induce the cardiac differentiation of stem cells. Epigenetics becomes a hot subject of research on the cardiac differentiation mechanism of stem cells providing new theories and methods for stem cell application in developmental biology, genetics and regenerative medicine.