Letter from the Editor

Abstract

This is the first issue of Epigenetics, which is the first international periodical focusing on the newly emerging field of epigenetics and is the official journal of the DNA Methylation Society. Our goal is that Epigenetics will be the lead primary journal in the field of epigenetics and will provide a comprehensive view of epigenetic modification, which spans biological systems and diseases. This diversity of themes and comprehensive approach to epigenetics is reflected in the composition of our editorial board, which includes world-class leaders in the different fields of epigenetics. The editorial board guides the peer review process and the development of the vision of the journal. We encourage members of the epigenetics community to contact the editorial board members with suggestions and questions regarding potential new submissions to the journal.

The journal will provide a forum where epigenetic approaches to a variety of medical and biological issues could be discussed and where the common basic principles of epigenetics spanning different systems could be revealed and shared. Although cancer has been the main focus of epigenetics in the last decade, recent data suggests that epigenetic plays a critical role in psychology andpsychopathology. It is being realized that normal behaviors such as maternal care and pathologies such as Schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s might have an epigenetic basis. It is also becoming clear that nutrition and life experiences have epigenetic consequences.

The increasing awareness of the potential role of epigenetic deregulation in disease has spawned the development of diagnostic and therapeutic approaches using epigenetics. Although the questions asked are diverse, the unifying hypothesis is epigenetics. The journal will emphasize scientific rigor but will at the same time promote and encourage open mindedness as well as provocative and novel hypotheses and approaches. The journal will provide a platform for developing unifying methodologies,hypotheses, experimental approaches and diagnostic agents and will serve as a meeting place for researchers from different systems such as general biology, plant biology, cancer biology, cancer therapeutics, epigenetic pharmacology, neurobiology and psychiatry who are unraveling the epigenetic facets of their specific fields of interest.

We recognize that our first issue is just a first small step, but we hope that it will be leading to a great journal, which will serve as the flagship of the epigenetics field. The success of the journal depends on the continuous and unswerving support of the epigenetics community by submitting the best papers to the journal, by participation in the review process and the editorial process and by contribution of suggestions and ideas.

Our first issue includes examples of each of the different areas, which we hope to see covered in the journal in the future. The issue starts with a meeting report of the Environmental Epigenomics conference held at Durham North Carolina in November 2005. This report points out the prospect that the environment sculpts our genomes through epigenetic markings and that some of these markings might be passed through the germ line. This emerging relationship between the environment and our epigenomes impacts on our understanding of the relative role of genetic heredity and environmental exposures in normal behavior and disease susceptibility. The key promise in an epigenetic understanding of human disease is its potential reversibility by therapeutic agents. Our two reviews discuss pharmacological and therapeutic approaches directed at the two components ofthe epigenome DNA methylation (Mund et al., pp. 7–13) and chromatin structure (Kim et al., pp. 14–23). Karimi et al. discuss a new method LUMA for quantification of global DNA methylation, and Baron et al. (pp. 55–60) discuss DNA methylation as a tool for cell typing. A new mode of Igf2r imprinting in opossum which does not involve DNA methylation is discussed by Weidman et al. (pp. 49–54) and Rivenbark et al. (pp. 32–44) show that not all gene targets of DNA methylation in breast cancer will contain a CpG island and they propose expansion of the current model for methylation-dependent regulation of gene expression to include genes lacking typical CpG islands.

Thatcher and Lasalle (pp. 24–33) show the global effects that the methylated DNA binding protein Mecp2 has on histone acetylation and modification during postnatal neuronal maturation, a finding, which has interesting implications on our understanding of the MeCP2 deficiency Rett syndrome. Our small first fruits do give us a glimpse of the different facets of the field from DNA methylation to chromatin, from methods development to diagnostics and from the environment totherapeutics. We hope that with the support of the members of the epigenetics community we will be able to establish a journal, of which we all will be proud.