ABOVE: Charles Gersbach, Duke University
In Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte’s lab at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, the health of mutant mice suffering from kidney disease, muscular dystrophy, or diabetes improved after the scientists tweaked genes associated with the ailments. Belmonte and his colleagues, however, didn’t edit the genes themselves. Instead, they targeted the epigenome to modify the chemical and protein tags that sit on the chromatin and influence gene expression.
Scientists are developing molecular tools to edit these epigenetic tags, uncovering how they affect the noncoding regions of the genome and control gene expression. A better understanding of how the epigenome functions could lead to new, safer therapeutics for diseases, from cancer to elevated cholesterol. “There are a lot of really cool things you can do with epigenome editing that are really different than genome editing,” says Charles Gersbach, a biomedical engineer at Duke University.
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