Title

Authors

Affiliation

¹Department of Pathology, Dunedin School of Medicine, University of Otago, 270 Great King Street, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand; ²National Research Centre for Growth and Development, New Zealand

Email

aniruddha.chatterjee@otago.ac.nz; *Corresponding author

Article Type

Views & Challange

Date

Received December1, 2011; Accepted December 5, 2011; Published December 10, 2011

Monozygotic twins are considered to be genetically identical, yet can show high discordance in their phenotypes and disease susceptibility. Several studies have emphasized the influence of external factors and the role of epigenetic polymorphism in conferring this variability. However, some recent high-resolution studies on DNA methylation show contradicting evidence, which poses questions on the extent of epigenetic variability between twins. The advent of next-generation sequencing technologies now allow us to interrogate multiple epigenomes on a massive scale and understand the role of epigenetic modification, especially DNA methylation, in regulating complex traits. This article briefly discusses the recent key findings, unsolved questions in the area, and speculates on the future directions in the field.

Keywords

monozygotic twins, epigenetics, DNA methylation, next-generation sequencing

Citation

Chatterjee & Morison. Bioinformation 7(7): 369-370 (2011)
 

Edited by

P Kangueane

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.