Iacobuzio-Donahue Christine A
Departments of Pathology and Oncology, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Baltimore, MD 21231, USA.
Annu Rev Pathol. 2009;4:229-49. doi: 10.1146/annurev.pathol.3.121806.151442.
Cancer is as much an epigenetic disease as it is a genetic disease, and epigenetic alterations in cancer often serve as potent surrogates for genetic mutations. Normal epigenetic modifications of DNA encompass three types of changes: chromatin modifications, DNA methylation, and genomic imprinting, each of which is altered in cancer cells. This review addresses the various epigenetic modifications that are pervasive among human tumors and traces the history of cancer epigenetics from the first observations of altered global methylation content to the recently proposed epigenetic progenitor model, which provides a common unifying mechanism for cancer development.
癌症既是一种基因疾病，也是一种表观遗传疾病，癌症中的表观遗传改变常常可作为基因突变的有力替代指标。DNA的正常表观遗传修饰包括三种类型的变化：染色质修饰、DNA甲基化和基因组印记，每一种在癌细胞中都会发生改变。本综述探讨了在人类肿瘤中普遍存在的各种表观遗传修饰，并追溯了癌症表观遗传学的历史，从首次观察到的整体甲基化含量改变，到最近提出的表观遗传祖细胞模型，该模型为癌症发展提供了一种共同的统一机制。
