In 2003, researchers declared that essentially the entire human genome had been sequenced. This monumental achievement provided a wealth of information about how genetic information is encoded within the genome. Yet the DNA base sequence is only a partial record of heritable information. As we have discussed, additional epigenetic information is contained within the chromatin structure—information that is heritable and affects how the DNA base sequence is expressed. The overall pattern of chromatin modifications in a genome has been termed the epigenome. Over the past few years, techniques have become available for detecting and describing epigenetic modifications across the genome.
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