title: Epigenetics: It's Getting Old. Past Meets Future in Paleoepigenetics.
abstract: Recent years have witnessed the rise of ancient DNA (aDNA) technology, allowing comparative genomics to be carried out at unprecedented time resolution. While it is relatively straightforward to use aDNA to identify recent genomic changes, it is much less clear how to utilize it to study changes in epigenetic regulation. Here we review recent works demonstrating that highly degraded aDNA still contains sufficient information to allow reconstruction of epigenetic signals, including DNA methylation and nucleosome positioning maps. We discuss challenges arising from the tissue specificity of epigenetics, and show how some of them might in fact turn into advantages. Finally, we introduce a method to infer methylation states in tissues that do not tend to be preserved over time.
authors.affiliation: Department of Genetics, The Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Edmond J. Safra Campus, Givat Ram, Jerusalem 91904, Israel.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Gokhman
authors.affiliation: Department of Genetics, The Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Edmond J. Safra Campus, Givat Ram, Jerusalem 91904, Israel; The Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 91904, Israel. Electronic address: meshorer@huji.ac.il.
authors.forename: Eran
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Meshorer
authors.affiliation: Department of Genetics, The Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Edmond J. Safra Campus, Givat Ram, Jerusalem 91904, Israel. Electronic address: liran.carmel@huji.ac.il.
authors.forename: Liran
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Carmel
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D004247:DNA / Q000235:genetics; D019175:DNA Methylation; D044127:Epigenesis, Genetic; D015186:Hominidae / Q000235:genetics*
chemical_list: D004247:DNA
keywords: DNA methylation; Denisovan; Neanderthal; ancient DNA; epigenetics; nucleosome