Preface
Epigenetics doesn’t change the genetic code, it changes how that’s read. Perfectly normal
genes can result in cancer or death. Vice-versa, in the right environment, mutant genes won’t
be expressed. Genes are equivalent to blueprints; epigenetics is the contractor. They change
the assembly, the Structure.
—Bruce Lipton
Nowadays, science is proving that our body possesses incredible self-healing and
self-repairing ability. These mechanisms are markedly influenced by our lifestyle,
environmental factors and also our beliefs, thoughts, emotions and intentions. A
change in the aforementioned factors can affect or even alter completely the tendency for expression.
During this process, our enormous code base, the DNA, will be read and the
manifestation which will be expressed is heavily influenced by epigenetic marks.
These marks are either written, read or modified. So we are based not only on plain
code, but we are the modifiers of the code through readers, writers and erasers. So we
have a profound vibrational effect on our continually evolving genetic code. We are
the programmers of the code. DNA activation is our “software upgrade”.
The specific scientific term “epigenetics” for these code reading, writing and
erasing has been first defined in 1942 by C.H. Waddington. This term has been used
in various contexts. Etymologically speaking, epigenetics deals with a precise
branch of genetics as the Greek prefix epi means “after”, “post” or “additionally”.
Today, in the molecular realm, all three meanings of epi are somewhat proven in the
rapidly growing body of literature especially in the last decade dealing with fundamental processes in a living cell which are outside of the classical genetic processes
and sources of genetic information like the DNA base pair sequence.
Today researches try to link an observed phenomenon or a disease down to the
molecular level. Besides the longer known epigenetic targets such as histone
deacetylases or DNA methyltransferases, a whole bunch of new enzymes and
enzyme complexes have been discovered in the last 15 years. This book mainly
discusses the recent advances in the drug development of epigenetic modulators
from a medicinal chemist’s viewpoint. Modern techniques in biology, biochemistry
and chemical biology allow researchers faster than ever to describe and discover new
v
Epigenetics doesn’t change the genetic code, it changes how that’s read. Perfectly normal
genes can result in cancer or death. Vice-versa, in the right environment, mutant genes won’t
be expressed. Genes are equivalent to blueprints; epigenetics is the contractor. They change
the assembly, the Structure.
—Bruce Lipton
Nowadays, science is proving that our body possesses incredible self-healing and
self-repairing ability. These mechanisms are markedly influenced by our lifestyle,
environmental factors and also our beliefs, thoughts, emotions and intentions. A
change in the aforementioned factors can affect or even alter completely the tendency for expression.
During this process, our enormous code base, the DNA, will be read and the
manifestation which will be expressed is heavily influenced by epigenetic marks.
These marks are either written, read or modified. So we are based not only on plain
code, but we are the modifiers of the code through readers, writers and erasers. So we
have a profound vibrational effect on our continually evolving genetic code. We are
the programmers of the code. DNA activation is our “software upgrade”.
The specific scientific term “epigenetics” for these code reading, writing and
erasing has been first defined in 1942 by C.H. Waddington. This term has been used
in various contexts. Etymologically speaking, epigenetics deals with a precise
branch of genetics as the Greek prefix epi means “after”, “post” or “additionally”.
Today, in the molecular realm, all three meanings of epi are somewhat proven in the
rapidly growing body of literature especially in the last decade dealing with fundamental processes in a living cell which are outside of the classical genetic processes
and sources of genetic information like the DNA base pair sequence.
Today researches try to link an observed phenomenon or a disease down to the
molecular level. Besides the longer known epigenetic targets such as histone
deacetylases or DNA methyltransferases, a whole bunch of new enzymes and
enzyme complexes have been discovered in the last 15 years. This book mainly
discusses the recent advances in the drug development of epigenetic modulators
from a medicinal chemist’s viewpoint. Modern techniques in biology, biochemistry
and chemical biology allow researchers faster than ever to describe and discover new
v