EPIGENETICS

摘要

Epigenetics is typically defined as the study of heritable changes in gene expression that are not due to changes in DNA sequence. Diverse biological properties can be affected by epigenetic mechanisms: for example, the morphology of flowers and eye colour in fruitflies. Epigenetic changes are crucial for the development and differentiation of the various cell types in an organism, as well as for normal cellular processes such as X-chromosome inactivation in female mammals and silencing of mating-type loci in yeast.