It’s widely accepted that molecular mechanisms mediating epigenetics include DNA methylation and histone modifications, but a team from Thomas Jefferson University has evidence to the contrary regarding the role of histone modifications. A study of Drosophila embryos from Jefferson’s Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology published ahead of print in Cell August 23 found that parental methylated histones are not transferred to daughter DNA. Rather, after DNA replication, new nucleosomes are assembled from newly synthesized unmodified histones.
