Ting Angela H, McGarvey Kelly M, Baylin Stephen B
The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, Baltimore, Maryland 21231, USA.
Genes Dev. 2006 Dec 1;20(23):3215-31. doi: 10.1101/gad.1464906.
It is increasingly apparent that cancer development not only depends on genetic alterations but on an abnormal cellular memory, or epigenetic changes, which convey heritable gene expression patterns critical for neoplastic initiation and progression. These aberrant epigenetic mechanisms are manifest in both global changes in chromatin packaging and in localized gene promoter changes that influence the transcription of genes important to the cancer process. An exciting emerging theme is that an understanding of stem cell chromatin control of gene expression, including relationships between histone modifications and DNA methylation, may hold a key to understanding the origins of cancer epigenetic changes. This possibility, coupled with the reversible nature of epigenetics, has enormous significance for the prevention and control of cancer.
越来越明显的是，癌症的发展不仅取决于基因改变，还取决于异常的细胞记忆或表观遗传变化，这些变化传递了对肿瘤发生和进展至关重要的可遗传基因表达模式。这些异常的表观遗传机制既体现在染色质包装的整体变化中，也体现在影响癌症进程重要基因转录的局部基因启动子变化中。一个令人兴奋的新主题是，了解干细胞对基因表达的染色质控制，包括组蛋白修饰与DNA甲基化之间的关系，可能是理解癌症表观遗传变化起源的关键。这种可能性，再加上表观遗传学的可逆性，对癌症的预防和控制具有巨大意义。
