Research

March 28, 2019


Epigenetics of blood oncology

Most hereditary changes occur in living organisms with the change of hereditary gene material, that is, DNA .

Epigenetics is a science that studies hereditary changes that are not accompanied by changes in DNA.

Epigenetic hereditary changes are mediated by various factors, including epigenetic regulators. One of the epigenetic regulators is protein TET2 encoded by the TET2 gene. This epigenetic regulator is often genetically altered (in the DNA of its gene) and deactivated in oncological blood diseases. The team of researchers from Denmark, Germany, the United States, and the United Kingdom first experimentally determined the location of TET2 attachment sites in the mouse genome and demonstrated that in the experimental system removal of TET2 (which is generally equivalent to a change/deactivation in the natural conditions) changes the epigenetic regulation of gene expression by influencing certain transcription factors in the process of development of blood cells (haematopoiesis) and oncological blood disease - Acute Myeloid Leukemia, thus providing evidence of the importance of destruction of the epigenetic function of TET2 in the model of development of at least one blood oncological disease.


The Article:

Genome Res. February 22, 2019 doi: 10.1101 / gr.239277.118.

TET2 binding to enhancers facilitates transcription factor recruitment in hematopoietic cells

Kasper D Rasmussen1 , Ivan Berest2, Sandra Kessler1 , Koutarou Nishimura1 , Lucia Simon-Carrasco1, George S Vassiliou3, Marianne Terndrup Pedersen1, Jesper Christensen1, Judith Zaugg2 and Kristian Helin4.5

1 University of Copenhagen, Denmark;

2 EMBL, Germany;

3 Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, UK;

4 Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, USA.


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