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Updated: Nov 20, 2025

Repressing Gene Transcription by Redirecting Cellular Machinery with Chemical Epigenetic Modifiers
Published on: September 20, 2018
Chromatin accessibility dynamics during cell fate reprogramming
Dongwei Li1,2,3,4, Xiaodong Shu1,3,4, Ping Zhu2
1CAS Key Laboratory of Regenerative Biology, South China Institutes for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, China.
Abstract:
Genome architecture and chromatin dynamics govern the fate and identify of a cell. Recent advances in mapping chromatin landscapes offer valuable tools for the acquisition of accurate information regarding chromatin dynamics. Here we discuss recent findings linking chromatin dynamics to cell fate control. Specifically, chromatin undergoes a binary off/on switch during iPSC reprogramming, closing and opening loci occupied by somatic and pluripotency transcription factors, respectively. This logic of a binary off/on switch may also be operational in cell fate control during normal development and implies that further approaches could potentially be developed to direct cell fate changes both in vitro and in vivo.
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