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Schallenberg, S.* ; Kretschmer, K.

New insight into type 1 diabetes development: resolving early diabetogenic CD4+ T cell responses that precede seroconversion.

Open Biol. 6 (2018)
Publ. Version/Full Text DOI PMC
Open Access Gold
It is undeniably one of the greatest findings in biology that (with some very minor exceptions) every cell in the body possesses the whole genetic information needed to generate a complete individual. Today, this concept has been so thoroughly assimilated that we struggle to still see how surprising this finding actually was: all cellular phenotypes naturally occurring in one person are generated from genetic uniformity, and thus are per definition epigenetic. Transcriptional mechanisms are clearly critical for developing and protecting cell identities, because a mis-expression of few or even single genes can efficiently induce inappropriate cellular programmes. However, how transcriptional activities are molecularly controlled and which of the many known epigenomic features have causal roles remains unclear. Today, clarification of this issue is more pressing than ever because profiling efforts and epigenome-wide association studies (EWAS) continuously provide comprehensive datasets depicting epigenomic differences between tissues and disease states. In this commentary, we propagate the idea of a widespread follow-up use of epigenome editing technology in EWAS studies. This would enable them to address the questions of which features, where in the genome, and which circumstances are essential to shape development and trigger disease states.
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Publication type Article: Journal article
Document type Editorial
Corresponding Author
Keywords Base-resolution Analysis; Dna-methylation; Wide Association; Transcription Factors; Mammalian Genome; Cells; System; Enhancers; Cancer; Genes
e-ISSN 2046-2441
Journal Open Biology
Quellenangaben Volume: 6, Issue: 3 Pages: , Article Number: , Supplement: ,
Publisher Royal Society of London
Publishing Place London
Non-patent literature Publications
Reviewing status Peer reviewed
Institute(s) Institute for Pancreatic Beta Cell Research (IPI)