ABSTRACT
Signicant advances have been made in the eld of genetics in the last 50 years and completion of the Human Genome Project provides opportunities in the eld of medicine to develop better diagnostics and targeted gene therapies. A new eld that will have an effect on medicine is epigenetics. It is the study of heritable changes in gene function that do not involve the DNA sequence but provide control of gene expression. In broad terms, it encompasses all inherited cellular material other than DNA, for example, proteins, RNAs, and various transcription factors present in oocytes that persist beyond fertilization through embryonic development and have a role in establishing patterns of gene expression. More commonly, however, the term refers to an increasing number of
CONTENTS
3.1 Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 73 3.2 Basic Mechanisms of Epigenetic Gene Regulation .........................................................75
