The following is an excerpt.
This week, a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesdescribes a little-known feature of the epigenetic landscape: a ‘PMD’, or partially methylated domain. PMDs are long stretches of DNA that have markedly little methylation compared with the rest of the genome. Scientists had spotted PMDs before, but only in cancer cells and cells cultured in the lab. The new study looked for PMDs in several human specimens, such as brain, blood and kidney cells, but found them in only one type: placenta.
Read the full post here: The Womb’s Strange Epigenome
