A Report from Two Meetings: Developmental Origins of Health and Disease and Epigenetics

Two meetings held concurrently in Perth, Australia, in November 2007 — one on epigenetics and one on the developmental origins of health and disease — were focused on understanding the mechanisms of disease as it relates to gene control. Epigenetics refers to modifications in gene expression that are controlled by heritable, but potentially reversible, changes that do not involve changes in the DNA sequence itself.

We’ve now learned that when a gene is methylated, it usually is inactive, and, when the histones around which the DNA is wrapped are acetylated, a gene usually is active. These developments are exciting because they might allow us to know when a gene is active in a specific tissue and even to determine whether the active gene is m…