title: Glycemic memory.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The mistake of predicting the future is perhaps not tending to repressed or past memories. Hamlet's 17th-Century soliloquy 'the heartache and the thousand natural shocks, that flesh is heir to', (3.1. 7-8) is a tale that looks beyond the present by linking the past with the future. The present article examines the resurgence in the field to understand gene-regulating epigenetic changes conferring glycemic memory.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Chromatin modifications are critical in regulating genome structure and function and despite the significant advances of recent years in identifying the enzymes-mediating chemical changes to histone tails and the DNA template, the precise regulation of gene expression remains incomplete in models of health and diabetic complications.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Dispelling the myth that all genomes are driven and respond equally, experimental research is now uncovering the function of enzymes conferring chromatin modifications. Whatever the role of the epigenome, showing its involvement in glycemic signaling is the first step to new strategies and targets to develop therapies that prevent, retard or reverse the long-term deleterious end-organ effects of chronic, intermittent and prior hyperglycemia.
authors.affiliation: Epigenetics in Human Health and Disease Laboratory, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. assam.el-osta@bakeridi.edu.au
authors.forename: Assam
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: El-Osta
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001786:Blood Glucose; D044127:Epigenesis, Genetic; D015971:Gene Expression Regulation, Enzymologic; D006657:Histones / Q000378:metabolism; D006801:Humans; D006943:Hyperglycemia / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D011499:Protein Processing, Post-Translational; D017382:Reactive Oxygen Species / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D001786:Blood Glucose; D006657:Histones; D017382:Reactive Oxygen Species