Access

News and Views

Nature Cell Biology 8, 315 (1 April 2006) | doi:10.1038/ncb0406-315

Pathways to silencing unite

Sin|[eacute]|ad Hayes

Although cells contain the full complement of genes, only a subset of these are actively transcribed at different stages of development. These differential patterns of gene expression are established, in part, by epigenetic mechanisms (such as histone and DNA methylation) that transmit these patterns to daughter cells during cell division.