Epigenetic Surgery Can Reactivate Genes without Butchering DNA

If DNA is to go under the knife, the cuts should be made with a scalpel, not a cleaver. For example, DNA bases may need to be relieved of the methyl groups they’ve accumulated during gene-silencing reactions. Excising the entire methylated base and replacing it with a demethylated base risks damaging the DNA. It appears, however, that a relatively delicate procedure may suffice to reactivate DNA that has been silenced via methylation.At Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit ä t (LMU) in Munich