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Updated: Jul 17, 2026

Repressing Gene Transcription by Redirecting Cellular Machinery with Chemical Epigenetic Modifiers
Published on: September 20, 2018
Epigenetic arbitration of cell fate decisions: tipping the bias
1Laboratory of Developmental Genetics and Imprinting, The Babraham Institute, Babraham Research Campus, Cambridge CB22 3AT, United Kingdom.
Abstract:
Epigenetic modifications of nucleosomal histones are thought to mediate transcriptional states and impose heritable instructions upon differentiation. In a paper of Torres-Padilla and colleagues in Nature, protein modification at arginine residues, namely of core histones, is correlated with cell fate determination at the 4-cell stage in the mouse embryo. This represents the first link of global epigenetic instructions associated with specification of early cell lineages.
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