Investigating H2A.Z as the epigenetic link between cellular plasticity and cancer

Although there has been a major effort to sequence the human genome, the information contained within our DNA is not sufficient to explain how a single fertilised egg can differentiate and develop into a human form comprised of over two hundred different cell types. A second layer of coding information is required to direct patterns of gene expression underpinning cell plasticity and subsequent cell fate decisions. This hidden information is contained within chromatin, the physiological template of all eukaryotic genomic processes.