Researchers have mapped the first time, "switches" that can enable or disable molecular individual genes in the DNA of more than 100 types of human cells, an achievement that highlights the complexity of genetic information and challenges of interpretation.
Researchers have revealed Wednesday epigenome map in the journal Nature, with over 20 articles on the subject. Genetic mapping was carried out in a research program with a duration of ten years Roadmap Epigenomics Program, worth 240 million dollars, funded by the US government.
The human genome is the genetic blueprint of an individual building. Epigenome can be understood as a series of highlights, underground structures and exclusions of that plan: if an individual's genome contains DNA associated with cancer, but that DNA is "excluded" from the epigenome molecules, for example, when DNA is very little likely to lead to cancer.
As genome sequencing individuals to infer the risk of disease is becoming more common, it will be even more important to understand how the epigenome influence this risk, but other health issues. Genome sequencing initiative is the centerpiece of "precision medicine" that US President Barack Obama this month announced it.
"The only way medicine promise high accuracy can be achieved is the inclusion epigenome," said Manolis Kellis, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who led the study of genetic mapping involving researchers from laboratories Croatia, Canada and USA.
Pharmaceutical companies including Merck & Co. Inc. is division of Roche Holding Genentech and GlaxoSmithKline Plc, conducts research on cancer in epigenetic said Joseph Costello, from the University of California at San Francisco, one of the four main directory laboratories that contributed to map epigenetic.
Epigenetic differences are one of the reasons why identical twins, who have identical DNA, not always develop the same genetic diseases, including cancer.
But inclusion epigenome precision medicine is daunting.
Environmental factors and lifestyle influences over time, epigenome, among whom were smoking, exercise, diet, exposure to toxic chemicals and even parents how to care for the children, according to Kellis.
Researchers must not only decipher how genes affect the epigenome, but also to understand how the lifestyle of individuals affect their epigenome.
The human genome is the entire DNA sequencing chromosomes. DNA is identical in every cell, from neurons in cardiac cells, to the epithelial cells.
Epigenome task is to differentiate cells: as a result of epigenetic signs, cardiac cells do not produce substances characteristic of brain cells, such as neurons and muscle fibers do not produce.
Published Wednesday epigenomic map showing how each of the 127 cell and tissue types are differentiated at the DNA level. Because scientists Roadmap program and discoveries were stored in a public database along research, other fully scientists could analyze the information before the map is published officially.
One of the studies based on this information showed, for example, that the brain cells of people who have died after being ill with Alzheimer's were presented at the epigenetic changes of DNA involved in the body's immune response.
Alzheimer's was never seen as a disease of the immune system so that the discovery opens a new path to understanding and treating this disease.
Other researchers have found that, because of the different epigenetic signature is unique types of cells, were able to predict with 90% accuracy, the origin of metastatic cancer, which is unknown in the case of 2% to 5% of the patients.
Thus, epigenetic information could provide clues oncologists that can save patients' lives, helping to establish treatment, according coauthored Shamil Sunyaev, genetics researcher at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
Researchers say that much more will be discovered in the future. Instead of the map epigenetic be late, "I see this as the beginning of a decade of epigenetics," said Manolis Kellis.
Source: Mediafax
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