Laboratory of Molecular Epigenetics, Institute of Biochemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, University of Stuttgart, Pfaffenwaldring 55, D-70569 Stuttgart, Germany.
Clin Epigenetics. 2015 Mar 4;7(1):18. doi: 10.1186/s13148-015-0044-x. eCollection 2015.
Epigenetics is currently one of the hottest topics in basic and biomedical research. However, to date, most of the studies have been descriptive in nature, designed to investigate static distribution of various epigenetic modifications in cells. Even though tremendous amount of information has been collected, we are still far from the complete understanding of epigenetic processes, their dynamics or even their direct effects on local chromatin and we still do not comprehend whether these epigenetic states are the cause or the consequence of the transcriptional profile of the cell. In this review, we try to define the concept of synthetic epigenetics and outline the available genome targeting technologies, which are used for locus-specific editing of epigenetic signals. We report early success stories and the lessons we have learned from them, and provide a guide for their application. Finally, we discuss existing limitations of the available technologies and indicate possible areas for further development.
表观遗传学是目前基础和生物医学研究中最热门的课题之一。然而，迄今为止，大多数研究都具有描述性，旨在研究各种表观遗传修饰在细胞中的静态分布。尽管已经收集了大量的信息，但我们离完全理解表观遗传过程、它们的动态，甚至它们对局部染色质的直接影响还有很长的路要走，我们仍然不清楚这些表观遗传状态是细胞转录谱的原因还是结果。在这篇综述中，我们试图定义合成表观遗传学的概念，并概述现有的基因组靶向技术，这些技术用于特定基因座的表观遗传信号编辑。我们报告了早期的成功案例以及从中吸取的教训，并为它们的应用提供了指南。最后，我们讨论了现有技术的局限性，并指出了可能的进一步发展方向。
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