Epigenetics in Cancer

Abstract

Classic genetics alone cannot explain the diversity of phenotypes within a population. Nor does classic genetics explain how, despite their identical DNA sequences, monozygotic twins or cloned animals can have different phenotypes and different susceptibilities to a disease. The concept of epigenetics offers a partial explanation of these phenomena. First introduced by C.H. Waddington in 1939 to name "the causal interactions between genes and their products, which bring the phenotype into being," epigenetics was later defined as heritable changes in gene expression that are not due to any alteration in the DNA sequence.