3 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: Ask Anything Wednesday - Biology, Chemistry, Neuroscience, Medicine, Psychology
Is the underlying mechanism for epigenetic changes understood yet? Like how the effect can spread within a person and from person to person?
Comment by Chiperoni at 18/01/2024 at 00:52 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
A lot of it yes. We know about how DNA gets methylated and how histones get modified with functional groups. We also understand the basic impacts these changes have. Furthermore, we know where we expect to find these changes in/on DNA.
We also have a pretty good understanding of how cells continue to propagate modifications in daughter cells.
However, we used to believe that most of the epigenome is heritable from parents to offspring. We now know that most of the epigenetic slate is wiped clean during meiosis so epigenetics are much less heritable than previously thought