ABSTRACT
The molecular mechanisms orchestrating stem cell fate receives enormous attention from basic and clinical scientists alike. This attention is caused by the aim to elucidate how stem cells coordinate their unique biological potential to self-renew with their capacity to differentiate into mature tissue cells. Clinicians hope to exploit stem cells and their functional programs for cell replenishment and tissue regeneration in patient cure. Moreover, stem cells can be the origin of cancer, and understanding how stem cells became malignant is essential to develop novel therapies. In recent years, epigenetics took centre stage in stem cell research because there is increasing evidence that stem cells orchestrate their fate-determining gene programs mainly through epigenetic alterations of chromatin. This notion is supported by the discovery of multiple disease-causing mutations in genes encoding epigenetic modifying proteins. In this chapter, we will review the current knowledge on how histone modifi cations and DNA methylation control
1Institute of Molecular Tumor Biology (IMTB), University of Münster, Germany. 2Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine Center, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA. *Corresponding author: frank.rosenbauer@ukmuenster.de
List of abbreviations after the text.
