DNA methylation, a hand behind neurodegenerative diseases | Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience

Epigenetic alterations represent a sort of functional modifications
related to the genome that are not responsible for changes in the
nucleotide sequence. DNA methylation is one of such epigenetic
modifications that have been studied intensively for the past several
decades. The transfer of a methyl group to the 5 position of a cytosine
is the key feature of DNA methylation. A simple change as such can be
caused by a variety of factors, which can be the cause of many serious
diseases including several neurodegenerative diseases. In this review,
we have reviewed and summarized recent progress regarding DNA
methylation in four major neurodegenerative diseases: Alzheimer's
disease (AD), Parkinson's disease (PD), Huntington's disease (HD), and
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The studies of these four major
neurodegenerative diseases conclude the strong suggestion of the
important role DNA methylation plays in these diseases. However, each of
these diseases has not yet been understood completely as details in
some areas remain unclear, and will be investigated in future studies.
We hope this review can provide new insights into the understanding of
neurodegenerative diseases from the epigenetic perspective.

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