HELIXPrep › Genetics, Cellular and Molecular Biology › Genetics & Evolutionary Biology
Module 3.1 · Topic 8
Module 3.1 · Topic 8
Changing what a gene does without changing a letter of it
Identical twins start life with identical DNA sequences. Decades later, their gene expression patterns can look strikingly different — some genes active in one twin, silent in the other — while their underlying DNA sequence hasn't changed at all. Nothing about mutation, recombination, or inheritance explains this.
If a gene's expression can change without any change to its DNA sequence, what's actually being modified?
Epigenetic modifications change gene expression by:
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