Epigenetics, changes in gene activity not caused by alterations to the sequence of DNA, may clarify some of these mechanisms because much of cell lineage and tissue-specific gene expression is tightly regulated by epigenetic programming [ 1].
However, alterations of the sequence UCUCC between nucleotides 216 and 220 in the flexible loop region of the revised secondary structure led to a precipitous drop in translation.
The notably stronger RNA-associated effects could relate to protection from decay [ 18], as well as alterations of the sequence that would change the coding properties of the mRNA.
Surprisingly, alteration of the CGCAAA sequence, which appeared to be similar to a conserved TTCAAA motif in the mammalian sequences (Figure 2), had no effect on transcription.
Epigenetic mechanisms, including DNA methylation and histone modifications, change gene expression without alteration of the DNA sequence itself.
Epigenetic processes are heritable changes in gene expression without alteration of the nucleotide sequence.
These pilS cassettes can unidirectionally be transferred to the pilE expression locus, resulting in partial alteration of the pilin sequence.
Putative loss-of-function (LoF) mutations were defined as variants that are protein truncating or result in significant alteration of the protein sequence.
The 4 copies of SeubFLO1, which encodes a lectin-like protein involved in flocculation, harbored only two positions with variations, and a change at one of these positions yielded an alteration of the protein sequence.
Furthermore, we could expect that many of the corresponding mutations would not yet be adapted to the "self" of the bacteria, as they would result from non-synonymous mutations in codons, leading to alteration of the polypeptide sequence of the corresponding genes.
There are other complex pathways for the transmission of a phenotype across generations without the transmission of a specific common or rare variant, namely through epigenetic factors that can result in the inheritance of gene expression patterns without an alteration of the DNA sequence [ 20].
