Gene silencing instructions acquired through 'molecular memory' tags on chromatin
Friday, March 21, 2014 - 13:02
in Biology & Nature
One of the mysteries of modern genetics has been solved: how acquired traits can be passed between generations in a process called epigenetic inheritance. The new work finds that cells don’t know to silence some genes based on information hardwired into their DNA sequences, but recognize heritable chemical marks that are added to the genes. These chemical tags serve as a form of molecular memory, allowing cells to recognize the genes and remember to silence them again in each new generation.