Epigenome of cardiac muscle cell mapped
Wednesday, October 29, 2014 - 04:02
in Health & Medicine
Pharmacologists have succeeded in mapping the epigenome of cardiac muscle cells. They hope the findings will lead to new insights into the development of congenital heart defects and chronic heart failure. The epigenome is the totality of epigenetic mechanisms that decide which genes are active in a cell and which are not. Changes in internal or environmental conditions, such as nutrition, stress, or drugs, can leave behind epigenetic patterns. Such mechanisms play an important role in the development of cancer, but their significance for heart disease is as yet largely unknown.