Question

Let's suppose you were interested in developing drugs to prevent epigenetic changes that may contribute to cancer. What cellular proteins would be the target of your drugs?

Answer 1

Potential targets:

1- DNA methyltransferases

2- Chromatin modifiers such as histone acetyltransferases, histone deacetylases, histone methyltransferases, etc.

3- Components of the RNA interference (RNAi) machinery such as Dicer, Argonaute, etc.

Step-by-step explanation:

Epigenetics can be defined as the study of any heritable change in the phenotype that does not involve modifications in the DNA sequence. Epigenetic mechanisms can be classified into three major types: 1-DNA methylation, 2-histone modifications (e.g., acetylation, methylation, phosphorylation, etc), and 3-regulatory non-coding RNAs (e.g., miRNAs, lncRNAs, siRNAs, etc) that modulate target gene expression via the RNA interference pathway. There are different types of proteins that are involved in these complex epigenetic mechanisms, and those cited above represent only some examples that can be used as therapeutic targets.