Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, MRC Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, London, UK.
Neurobiol Aging. 2011 Jul;32(7):1188-91. doi: 10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2010.10.021. Epub 2011 Apr 16.
Epigenetics is the study of mitotically heritable, but reversible, changes in gene expression brought about principally through alterations in DNA methylation and chromatin structure. The comprehensive review by Mastroeni et al. (Mastroeni, D., Grover, A., Delvaux, E., Whiteside, C., Coleman, P., Rogers, J., 2010. Epigenetic mechanisms in Alzheimer's disease. Neurobiol. Aging, doi:10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2010.08.017) in this issue describes mounting evidence for an involvement of epigenetic alterations in the etiology of Alzheimer's disease (AD), highlighting the potential of epigenomic approaches for uncovering novel molecular pathways involved in pathology. Here, we briefly describe some methodological issues related to epigenomic studies using postmortem brain tissue in Alzheimer's disease, and argue for an integrated genetic-epigenetic approach to disease etiology.
表观遗传学是研究有丝分裂遗传的、可逆转的基因表达变化，主要通过 DNA 甲基化和染色质结构的改变来实现。Mastroeni 等人的全面综述（Mastroeni，D.，Grover，A.，Delvaux，E.，Whiteside，C.，Coleman，P.，Rogers，J.，2010. 阿尔茨海默病的表观遗传机制。神经生物学与衰老，doi:10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2010.08.017）在本期中描述了越来越多的证据表明表观遗传改变参与了阿尔茨海默病（AD）的发病机制，强调了表观基因组学方法在揭示参与病理学的新分子途径方面的潜力。在这里，我们简要描述了一些与使用阿尔茨海默病死后脑组织进行表观基因组学研究相关的方法学问题，并主张对疾病发病机制采用综合的遗传-表观遗传方法。
