A review on epigenetics: Manifestations, modifications, methods & challenges

Abstract

Epigenetics is the sum total of the heritable changes in phenotype, independent and irrespective of the genotype. It works by switching on or off the concerned enzymes. The ongoing research works focus mainly on the revelation of the epigenetics behind the several diseases. Diverse classes of enzymes have been studied duly pertaining to the four main systems running in the background viz., DNA methylation processes, histone modifications, chromatin remodeling and nc-RNA silencing, resulting in epigenetic modifications and the eventual constitution of epigenome. The methods used are Combined bisulfite restriction analysis (COBRA), Chromatin Immuno-precipitation method (ChIP) and DNAase I seq.