Tia Ghose | Jan 18, 2009 | 2 min read
It's not just genes that are inherited. Chemical tags that affect gene expression levels may be inherited too, a new study published online this week in Nature Genetics reports. Molecular biologist Arturas Petronis and his colleagues at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, Canada compared DNA methylation patterns from epithelial cells inside the mouths of 39 sets of identical and 40 sets of fraternal twins. Compared to fraternal twins, identical twins had more similar methyla