The Role of Bioinformatics in Epigenetics

Epigenetics is an upcoming field that studies the gene regulation of mitotically heritable genes which change the physiology of cells without altering the DNA sequence. Various epigenetic elements such as modification of histone proteins, methylation of DNA, chromatin modeling, and RNA-mediating silencing influence the regulation of genes at many levels, which leads to diseases such as cancer. All of these factors modulate gene expression in a tissue-specific manner. Bioinformatics is a successful approach in the field of molecular biology for studying epigenomics data. To generate these epigenomic data which can be analyzed using various bioinformatics tools and software, a variety of technologies are being used by researchers. Many biological databases which store a huge amount of information related to the modifications due to epigenetics are available online. With the help of these data, we can identify key target genes that can be manipulated to achieve some resistance against diseases caused by epigenetic factors.