Epigenetics
Several MCTP researchers focus on epigenetics -- features such as DNA modifications that are stable over rounds of cell division but do not involve changes in the underlying DNA sequence of the organism. These epigenetic changes play a role in the process of cellular differentiation, allowing cells to maintain different characteristics despite containing the same genomic material.
Epigenetic features are inherited when cells divide despite a lack of change in the DNA sequence itself. Although most of these features are considered dynamic over the course of development in multicellular organisms, some epigenetic features show transgenerational inheritance and are inherited from one generation to the next.
