DNA Methylation in Mammalian Cells

Abstract

Epigenetic regulation was first studied in the 1970s and has quickly gained global interest. It is involved at many different stages of mammalian cell development. The broad nature of epigenetic regulation has led to it being referred to as an 'all stage' mechanism of regulation as it is implicated in many developmental stages including embryonic development, ageing and in cancer progression. The term 'epigenetic' refers to the alteration of gene expression without changing the genomic sequence. Epigenetic regulation involves the main subtypes of DNA methylation and histone modification, and microRNA expression. Epigenetic alteration is used by mammalian cells to 'turn-on and -off' the gene expression. During embryonic development this process is used to induce cell apoptosis of genes that are no longer useful. During cancer development, epigenetics works to repress tumour suppressor gene expression and activate oncogene expression. The stability and sustainability for the detection of epigenetic markers make it an attractive area for biomarker and drug discovery. In this book chapter we will discuss the key epigenetic processes involved in mammalian cell development and disease progression, specifically in cancer.

Mammalian SWI/SNF Chromatin Remodeling Complexes in Embryonic Stem Cells: Regulating the Balance Between Pluripotency and Differentiation

“…Besides signaling and TFs, chromatin remodeling complexes play instrumental roles on maintaining the identity of ESCs (Papatsenko et al, 2018 ). At least three epigenetic mechanisms allow regulation of DNA expression and chromatin accessibility, which include DNA methylation (Winata et al, 2018 ), histone modifications (Lawrence et al, 2016 ), and ATP-dependent chromatin remodeling (Clapier et al, 2017 ). This mini-review will focus on the SWI/SNF family of ATP-dependent chromatin remodeling complexes and its role in the maintenance of ESCs and their differentiation.…”