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Rapid Advances in the Field of Epigenetics

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Genomics and Proteomics for Clinical Discovery and Development

Part of the book series: Translational Bioinformatics ((TRBIO,volume 6))

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Abstract

Epigenetic regulations have been known as phenomena such as the X chromosome inactivation since the mid-twentieth century. Recently, DNA methylation and post-translational modification on histones, which consist chromatin, have been proved to mediate the epigenetic regulations. Then, DNA methyltransferases and histone deacetylases have been implicated in carcinogenesis to be attractive drug targets.

More recently, the filed of epigenome is rapidly advancing by findings such as methyltransferases and demethylases for histones and DNA demethylases and about 40 % of the genome was transcribed into none-coding RNA which participated in further transcriptional regulations. It also has been known that many life phenomena are regulated epigenetically with familiar factors including vitamins, environmental hormones and viral infection.

In this chapter, Sect. 10.1 presents the history of epigenome, the epigenetic regulators including DNA, histones and RNA, and some epigenetic phenomena such as reprograming and differentiation. Section 10.2 describes epigenome drug targets and current situation of the drug development. In addition, as the latest approaches, we illustrate genomic next generation sequencer and proteomic mass spectrometer.

Mass spectrometry is now approaching to the level to identify almost all of the translated proteins and have advantages in direct detection of post-translational modifications by their molecular shift. As an example of the epigenome analyses, we describe the methods, challenges and perspectives to reveal combinatorial histone modifications.

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Abbreviations

DNMT:

DNA methyltransferase

HAT:

Histone Acetyl Transferase

HDAC:

Histone deacetylase

HMT:

Histone methyltransferase

KDM:

Lysine Demethylase

ncRNA:

Non-coding RNA

SAM:

S-adenosylmethionine

SAH:

S-adenosylhomocysteine

HTS:

High throughput screening

NGS:

Next Generation DNA Sequencer

SNP:

Single nucleotide polymorphism

LC-MS:

Liquid Chromatography Mass Spectrometry

ETD:

Electron transfer dissociation

ECD:

Electron Capture Dissociation

SRM:

Selected Reaction Monitoring

MRM:

Multiple Reaction Monitoring

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory for Systems Biology and Medicine (LSBM), Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology (RCAST), The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Takeshi Kawamura Ph.D.

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  1. Takeshi Kawamura Ph.D.
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Correspondence to Takeshi Kawamura Ph.D. .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Clinical Protein Science & Imaging, Biomedical Center, Biomedical Engineering, Biomedical Center D13, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

    György Marko-Varga

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Kawamura, T. (2014). Rapid Advances in the Field of Epigenetics. In: Marko-Varga, G. (eds) Genomics and Proteomics for Clinical Discovery and Development. Translational Bioinformatics, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9202-8_10

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