The Role of Bioinformatics in Epigenetics

Epigenetics is an upcoming field that studies the gene regulation of mitotically heritable genes which change the physiology of cells without altering the DNA sequence. Various epigenetic elements such as modification of histone proteins, methylation of DNA, chromatin modeling, and RNA-mediating silencing influence the regulation of genes at many levels, which leads to diseases such as cancer.

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All of these factors modulate gene expression in a tissue-specific manner. Bioinformatics is a successful approach in the field of molecular biology for studying epigenomics data. To generate these epigenomic data which can be analyzed using various bioinformatics tools and software, a variety of technologies are being used by researchers.

Many biological databases which store a huge amount of information related to the modifications due to epigenetics are available online. With the help of these data, we can identify key target genes that can be manipulated to achieve some resistance against diseases caused by epigenetic factors.

Epigenetic research uses a wide range of molecular biological techniques to further understanding of epigenetic phenomena, including chromatin immunoprecipitation (together with its large-scale variants ChIP-on-chip and ChIP-Seq), fluorescent in situ hybridization, methylation-sensitive restriction enzymes, DNA adenine methyltransferase identification (DamID) and bisulfite sequencing. Furthermore, the use of bioinformatics methods has a role in computational epigenetics.

Genetic Code

The similarity of the word to "genetics" has generated many parallel usages. The "epigenome" is a parallel to the word "genome", referring to the overall epigenetic state of a cell, and epigenomics refers to global analyses of epigenetic changes across the entire genome.

The phrase "genetic code" has also been adapted – the "epigenetic code" has been used to describe the set of epigenetic features that create different phenotypes in different cells from the same underlying DNA sequence. Taken to its extreme, the "epigenetic code" could represent the total state of the cell, with the position of each molecule accounted for in an epigenomic map, a diagrammatic representation of the gene expression, DNA methylation and histone modification status of a particular genomic region.

More typically, the term is used in reference to systematic efforts to measure specific, relevant forms of epigenetic information such as the histone code or DNA methylation patterns.

• Medicine

Epigenetics has many and varied potential medical applications. In 2008, the National Institutes of Health announced that $190 million had been earmarked for epigenetics research over the next five years.

In announcing the funding, government officials noted that epigenetics has the potential to explain mechanisms of aging, human development, and the origins of cancer, heart disease, mental illness, as well as several other conditions. Some investigators, like Randy Jirtle, Ph.D., of Duke University Medical Center, think epigenetics may ultimately turn out to have a greater role in disease than genetics.

source: springer & wiki