Accumulation of DNA Methylation Changes in the Progression of Gastritis to Gastric Cancer

The field of epigenetics describes information transmission through cell divisions of heritable changes of gene transcription activity without DNA sequence changes. Epigenetic informa‐ tion is biologically important for tissue or organ development and cell differentiation. Altera‐ tion of epigenetic information is involved in the development of cancers and other diseases. DNA methylation, histone modifications, and transmitted chromatin structure are the under‐ lying mechanisms for epigenetic transmission. Aberrant DNA methylation is found in two dis‐ tinct forms, hypermethylation and hypomethylation. Global hypomethylation and regional hypermethylation are characterized as two features of human cancer cells [1,2].